How to shut down a nuclear power station
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re going behind the scenes at two former nuclear power stations – one that’s recently closed, and another that’s been out of action for 25 years.
Both are at Hinkley Point in Somerset, in the south of England.
What happens when the generators stop? We look into the unique challenges of cleaning up radioactive sites safely.
Produced and presented by Theo Leggett
(Image: Steam escapes from Hinkley Point B in 2022. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. |
| 0:05.7 | It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others, were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. |
| 0:15.3 | Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:25.2 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Theo Leggett and in this program we're going to go |
| 0:31.0 | inside not one but two nuclear power stations. Or should I say ex-nuclear power stations because they've both been shut down, |
| 0:39.6 | one just last year and the other almost a quarter of a century ago. We'll be hearing what |
| 0:45.0 | happens when the generators first stop generating. With a nuclear power station, you can't just |
| 0:49.6 | turn the lights off and walk away. You can't just demolish it. You have to safely remove all the hazards and that includes the nuclear fuel in the reactors. |
| 0:58.0 | We'll be looking at the unique challenges involved in cleaning up radioactive sites safely |
| 1:03.0 | and hearing why older nuclear power stations are so difficult to dismantle. |
| 1:07.0 | A lot of these facilities were built, some of them 60 years ago, and they weren't really |
| 1:12.3 | designed with being taken apart in mind. There was a rush to put these reactors up, to get them |
| 1:17.4 | generating electricity for the grid, and it was almost a problem to be dealt with later. |
| 1:22.4 | And with the cleanup process taking up to 100 years, we'll be hearing why decommissioning has a prosperous future, |
| 1:29.1 | whatever happens to the rest of the nuclear industry. |
| 1:37.8 | Hinkley Point B is a nuclear power station on the southwest coast of England. |
| 1:42.6 | It was opened in 1976, and for nearly half a century |
| 1:46.5 | its two reactors produced enough electricity to power millions of homes. But with cracks developing |
| 1:52.9 | in the graphite of its nuclear cores last year it shut down for good. And now I've been |
| 1:58.4 | finding out what happens next. We're standing on one of the two reactors. |
| 2:02.6 | Below us is the actual reactor with 308 spaces for fuel elements. |
| 2:08.6 | This is where the power was generated when we were in generation load. |
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