Video footage from inside one of the reactor at a nuclear power place in Scotland has reveal over 350 hairline cranny in the bricks , meaning it may make it impossible to shut down in an hand brake .
Electrical Company EDF , who owns the Hunterston B force station in the Scotch county of Ayrshire , close to 40 kilometers ( 24 stat mi ) from Glasgow , exhaust image and footage that shows wisecrack have take form inside the nuclear reactor ’s graphite brick , which are used in the core of atomic reactor to slow up down neutron and keep the reaction unchanging . The bricks are also used to channelize the carbon copy dioxide used to cool down down the reaction . For this ground , they play an important part in making the adroitness safe .
Cracks are expected to go on over time , and given that the station was work up in the 1970s , it ’s not surprising . However , last year , the power company discovered that Reactor 3 had 370 hairline pass in the around 3,000 brick in the nuclear reactor – the safety limit is 350 – so the reactor was consider out of operation and has not bring forth electrical energy for a year . The limit , put in place by the Office of Nuclear Regulation ( ONR ) , is to guarantee that the nuclear reactor can be shut down safely in an emergency .
" We have to demonstrate that the nuclear reactor will always exclude down and that it will keep out down in an utmost seismal case , " post director Colin Weir told theBBC . " We ’ve carried out one of our bragging ever inspection campaigns on reactor three , we ’ve regenerate our modeling , we ’ve done experiment and tests and we ’ve analyzed all the datum from this to produce our safety case that we will submit to the ONR . ”
EDF is planning to make a case to the ONR that the operational limit should be raised to 700 cracks and then restart the reactor . All 14 Advanced gas pedal - Cooled nuclear reactor in the UK employ graphite bricks , so the decision made about the crack limit in this reactor may affect the wider energy yield of the full state . There is clearly a lot of interest in see graphite and its rubber limits in point .
" Putting a specific value on the phone number of cracks consider reasonable is unmanageable . Graphite is complicated , and irradiated graphite is more so . This is why scientist have been latterly doing so much research on it , " atomic expert Dr Ben Britton from Imperial College London told IFLScience . " Typically limits were based upon very conservative estimates , and EDF will have to make a rigorous technical case for ONR to approve variety to the limit point . "
Currently , the Hunterston B office plant provides a base - load of electrical energy enough to power 1.8 million homes and it is gestate to remain in operation until 2023 .
[ H / T : BBC News ]
