Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Hinkley Point A nuclear power station
Summary
Hinkley Point A nuclear power station is a former Magnox nuclear power station. It is located on a site in Somerset on the Bristol Channel coast, west of the River Parrett estuary. The ongoing decommissioning process is being managed by Nuclear Decommissioning Authority licensee Magnox Ltd.
Hinkley Point A was one of three Magnox power stations located close to the mouth of the River Severn and the Bristol Channel, the others being Oldbury, and Berkeley.
The construction of the power station, which was undertaken by a consortium backed by English Electric, Babcock & Wilcox Ltd and Taylor Woodrow Construction, began in 1957. The reactors and the turbines were supplied by English Electric.
In 1988, reactor 2 set a world record for the longest continuous period of power generation from a commercial nuclear reactor, of 700 days and 7 hours. Hunterston A Nuclear Power Station held the previous world record of 698 days.
The power station, which is undergoing decommissioning, had two Magnox reactors, each supplying steam to three English Electric 93.5 MWe turbine generator sets which were all together across both reactors designed to produce 500 MWe net but, after de-rating of the reactor power output due to corrosion concerns, both reactors combined produced 470 MWe net.
The design followed the principles established by the Calder Hall nuclear power station, in that it used a reactor core of natural uranium fuel in Magnox alloy cans within a graphite moderator, all contained in a welded steel pressure vessel. The core was cooled by pumped by six nominal 7,000 hp (5.2 MW) gas circulators, which transported the hot gas from the core to the six Steam Raising Units (boilers) via steel ducts. The gas circulators could be driven by induction motors supplied with mains electricity or, when steam was available, dedicated variable speed turbo alternator sets. The design pressure of the gas circuit was 185 psig, and the temperature of the gas leaving the reactor was , although this was later reduced when the hot was found to be corroding the mild steel components of the gas circuit more quickly than had been anticipated.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.