We went on holiday to Essex near a nuclear power station, which
was obviously the highlight of the visit. Actually, it's a disused
power station; the 'decommissioning' process has started (this appears
to be one guy with a JCB), although it's going to take another hundred
years or so before the reactors are cold enough to dismantle.
Anyway, after a painstaking struggle I managed to select only
twenty-four pictures (out of several hundred). Here they are.
Here's the sign for the site. (I cheated a bit; the sign is actually
supposed to be pointing down the road behind, and this road
is part of a disused airfield that's now just farmland.)
The power station has two reactors, which used to produce about
242 MW. The containment vessels are an older type made from
steel rather than concrete, which didn't encase all the pipework
for the coolant, meaning that they used to gently irradiate the
surrounding countryside. (It's okay, nobody much lives here.)
Presumably the two reactors are inside the massive brick
structures here.
The power station viewed from a helipad. (Heli-lawn?)
View down the middle of the site between what might be the reactor
halls and what might be the turbine hall. (Shame Wikipedia didn't
have a site plan, or I could be a bit more definitive...)
A large structure in the middle of the river looks very sinister -
maybe a place where a nuclear submarine might park up? Actually,
it's the outfall for the warm-but-probably-not-very-radioactive
coolant water, but it still looks good.
Okay, the sign wasn't really all that ominous when you lean out to
see the front, although I don't know if a power danger cable is
something you want in your backyard.
