5 ms·

As soon as I read the headline, I knew exactly what this was about! I'm not sure if it's still there (I left the area in 1988), but you used to be able to see

• fifilura 2y ago
  Why do they use trains to move the rods around? Are there actually places in Britain where it is not possible to move them by shipping. It seems like a high cost to introduce a new way of transportation when one (safe-ish) method is already available.
  • ralferoo 2y ago
    I guess it'd be harder to retrieve it from the seabed if there was an accident than from a train line, as you can always drive / build cranes to places on land. I doubt it'd rust through any time soon in the sea, but I'd imagine it would have been even more likely to draw environmental protest.
    • teqsun 2y ago
      I would also think the "locating" aspect plays a role. Things can easily be lost at the bottom of the sea, isn't there a history of nuclear bombs that were accidentally lost at sea and never found?
      • dwighttk 2y ago
        The US lost an atom bomb in the swamps of North Carolina and never recovered it.
  • arethuza 2y ago
    A lot of UK nuclear plants (all?) are on the coast but they certainly don't all have docks handy with the kind of equipment necessary to move such items. Rail actually seems a pretty good choice to me.
    • fifilura 2y ago
      Yeah, my question was mostly out of curiosity. At some point someone must have approved this project and the costs coming with it. One answer could be the military with endlessly deep pockets. My point is that it should have been easy to just continue with shipping, as it seems to me that it has to be the default. But maybe I am wrong? Either way there has to be pros and cons of course. But risking a train accident at 100 mph relative speed and fuel laying open without means for cooling seems like a very high risk.
      • arethuza 2y ago
        I don't think the UK military has ever operated on the basis of "endlessly deep pockets" e.g. At one point the PM relied on using AA phone boxes and reverse charges calls to launch the V bombers: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/britains-bizarre-cold-war-nuclear-plan-involved-aa-telephone/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/britains-bizarre... Edit: Mind you, the hand written "letters of last resort" and regarding not being able to receive Radio 4 as indicating the end of civilisation as we know it do have a certain charm.
        • fifilura 2y ago
          I can not read the article, but maybe this was by design. They expected the telephone boxes to be more resilient than building a custom system. Either way - what did the V bomber program cost?
        • timthorn 2y ago
          It wasn't the AA phone boxes but their radio network. From the article: > Whitehall arranged for the prime minister’s car to have a radio link – with which the AA used to communicate with its mechanics – that would tell the driver that he needed to reach a public phone box, from which Macmillan would call Whitehall. It was suggested that government drivers carried four pennies, as that was the minimum sum needed in a GPO phone box. I once heard a Radio 4 programme about the letters of last resort, where a senior military figure described the responsibility on a PM's shoulders whilst writing them as "Awesome, with a capital F"
  • lonelyasacloud 2y ago
    It's other way round. Although nuclear sites tend to have access to water many of them in the UK do not have ready access to suitable large harbours (these places by definition tend to be out of the way). In the UK building and maintaining these harbours would be way more expensive than sticking it on the road for a relatively short hop (even in the remote areas) to the nearest local railhead.
    • timthorn 2y ago
      Many also have/had their own railhead, so the road part wasn't always needed.
      • youngtaff 2y ago
        There are a few without their own rail head e.g. Oldbury on Severn and think the fuel for there was sent somewhere near Berkley and then by road I lived in Berkley about 25 years ago and my next door neighbour was part of the team that managed fuel shipments around the UK
        • arethuza 2y ago
          As far as I can tell, the Torness AGR plant doesn't have a rail link even though it is pretty close (less than 1km) from the east coast main line.
          • FLHerne 2y ago
            There's a dedicated transfer facility with a siding and crane on the ECML about 1.5km west of the power station.
            • arethuza 2y ago
              Thanks - once I knew it was there it was easy to spot.
          • chickenbig 2y ago
  • pjc50 2y ago
    This seems to start from the weird premise that moving things by ship is the default? Not really the case in the UK since the invention of the railways started to obsolete the canal network.
    • fifilura 2y ago
      Nuclear power needs massive amounts of cooling so they are most often built close to the sea, or at least a major river.
    • 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      Shipping is incredibly efficient, so it is not an outrageous assumption.
  • peterpost2 2y ago
    they also move them by trucks.
• jgrahamc 2y ago
  Yes, me too. I remember this very well. It was especially important in the context of the time.
• mihaaly 2y ago
  Ok, but how one make a 2.2m x 2.2m x 2.5m "single-piece steel forging" so the inside cavity can be machined out of the solid. That sounds a great metallurgical achievement in this size, allowing the huge piece of metal not only cooling without breaking itself apart from temperature differences of inside and outside but preserving a great deal of streangth too.
  • mttch 2y ago
    https://www.sheffieldforgemasters.com/capabilities/forge https://www.sheffieldforgemasters.com/capabilities/forge