| Bradwell Power station history |
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| Written by TheGuy | |
| Saturday, 01 September 2007 | |
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Construction of Bradwell power station began in December 1957 and
electricity generation started in 1962. Bradwell was built on the edge
of a former World War II airfield, one and a half miles from the Essex
coastline. Its location was deliberately chosen as the land had minimal
agricultural value, offered easy access, was geologically sound and had
an unlimited source of cooling water from the North Sea.
Bradwell was one of eleven Magnox nuclear power stations commissioned in the
UK between 1956 and 1971. Bradwell was the former Central
Electricity Generating Board’s (CEGB) second nuclear power station to
be built for commercial electricity generation – it began generation
just days after its sister station at Berkeley in Gloucestershire. The
station was officially opened by the Lord Lieutenant for the County of
Essex on the 5th May 1963. Over its operational lifetime, the station supplied the National Grid with almost 60 billion units of electricity - more than enough electricity to meet the entire needs of the UK’s domestic consumers for six months.n March, 2002, Bradwell was closed and decommissioning began. The station had generated nearly 60 TWh of electricity during its operational life and, on a typical day, could supply enough electricity to meet the needs of three towns the size of Colchester, Chelmsford and Southend Bradwell was built on the edge of a former Second World War airfield. Its location was deliberately chosen as the land had "minimal agricultural value, offered easy access, was geologically sound and had an unlimited source of cooling water from the North Sea" In 1999, it was announced that the station would cease operation in 2002 - the first station to be closed on a planned basis. On the 28th March 2002, the Rt Honourable Lord Braybrooke JP, Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant for the County of Essex, carried out the official closure ceremony. The site then embarked on the task of defuelling the reactors and shipping all fuel to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing. The final fuel element was removed from Reactor 2 in December 2005. Following stringent inspections, the regulators were able to confirm all fuel had left the site, enabling a formal transition to a decommissioning site in October 2006. Station ownership 1962-1989: Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) 1989-1994: Nuclear Electric plc (following the part privatisation of the CEGB) 1994-1998: Magnox Electric plc (following the transfer of the AGR and PWR nuclear power stations to British Energy plc) 1998-2004: British Nuclear Fuels plc 2004 to date: The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (following the restructuring of the UK nuclear industry and transfer of all UK nuclear legacy to the NDA) |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 18 September 2008 ) |
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