Why did Berkeley power station close down?

Answer 1

Berkeley was a magnox gas cooled reactor in the UK. The design life was for 25 years. It started up in 1962 and closed down permanently in 1989, 27 years later. So this was within the design intention.

It is not known how much background the questioner has in the UK nuclear history and methods of operation. Regulation of the safety of nuclear power stations in the UK is the responsibility of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and its nuclear arm the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), government sponsored organisations that have the legal authority and indeed obligation to carry this out, and issuing licences to operate.

The licensee (generally owner) of each plant must produce safety reports to satisfy technical analysis by the NII, who may introduce additional requirements from time to time.

Towards the end of the 1980's it was realised that the earlier magnox reactors were approaching end of design life, and the NII asked for Long Term Safety Reviews (LTSR's) to be prepared to justify continuing operation. The background to this can be appreciated by studying document http://www.hse.gov.UK/nuclear/magnox.pdf which can be looked up on the internet. Appendix B gives information about the sort of matters of concern to NII. Para 47 of the report is specific to Berkeley. As stated, a number of hardware modifications and complex in-service inspections would have been required by March 1989. Appendic C gives a summary of what was required for Bradwell, another magnox reactor of identical age to Berkeley, but different layout of the primary gas circuit, to illustrate the sort of thing being required.

In the case of Berkeley, the licensee (then the CEGB) decided that the economic realities were that to achieve the required changes would be uneconomic in terms of the benefits of continued operation, and so the plant was permanently shutdown. It is important to realise that the plant was not shutdown because of an existing safety defect, but because it would not have been economically worthwhile to achieve the new requirements.

If the questioner is really into studying this further, Ref 1 of the above HSE report should be obtained. This is listed as 'HSE Books 1988' and has ISBN ref 0 11 883985 3. The publisher is not given, but HSE should be able to help.