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Is Nuclear Power History? from Montebello to Magnox

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Is Nuclear Power History? from Montebello to Magnox GENERATION Is nuclear power history? From Montebello to Magnox... by Chris Meyer, technical journalist This is the ninth of a series of articles being publishers in Energize tracing the history of nuclear energy throughout the world. “We have to have this thing [the atom bomb] were: and the role played in all this by the given to the scientists working at the top- over here whatever it costs…we have got to man the Americans dubbed the “Smiling secret wartime laboratory in Los Alamos in have [the] bloody Union Jack on top of it” Killer”. 1944, and illustrated his abilities: analytical skill, expertise, effective communication, and, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1946, The “Smiling Killer” and the British bomb especially valuable in producing nuclear launching the development of nuclear “His presentation was in a scientific matter- weapons, translating results into practical weapons in the United Kingdom. (Ref. 6; 1) of-fact style, with his usual brightly smiling applications. On 3 October 1952, roughly one year after face; many of the Americans had not This made him an especially valuable the construction of first nuclear submarine been exposed to such a detailed and member of the team, amply demonstrated had begun in the United States and three realistic discussion of casualties, and he when he worked out a method to measure years after the arrest of Klaus Fuchs, the was nicknamed “the Smiling Killer” (Peierls, the energy of the blast from the first bomb first British atom bomb test took place. This 1985: 201) tested: a “number of wooden boxes was staged in a little-known group of islands The man Rudi Peierls was describing was prepared with circular holes of varying sizes, (Trimoulle Island, one of the MonteBello William G Penney, a British specialist in the covered with paper” (Peierls, 1985: 203). The Islands), just off the west coast of Australia. physics of hydrodynamic waves (which overpressure of the blast wave ruptured the The test took place underwater (2,7 m below included shock waves and ocean waves). paper of the larger holes, while the paper water), largely vaporising the ship holding the The presentation he gave that unnerved covering the smaller holes remained intact. bomb, the HMS Plym, with a few hot metal his American audience was on the effect By examining the size of the largest holes fragments causing fires on the nearby island of German bombing on England, and the still covered, Penney could calculate the ( Ref. 7, 1-6). casualties this caused. Penney’s talk was overpressure, the intensity of the blast wave, The idea of a ship-borne bomb was then a major concern to the British, and had first been raised by no less a person than Albert Einstein in late 1939. In his famous letter to President Roosevelt, which warned of the possibility of nuclear weapons being made and led to the starting of the Manhattan Project, Einstein had noted that a “single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory” (Wheeler K, 1983:20). At that time in 1939, nobody, even Einstein, had yet realised that a few kg of uranium-235 or plutonium could be used to make a bomb light enough for an aircraft to carry. Initial calculations had shown that thousands of kg of natural uranium metal would be needed to make a nuclear weapon, and a ship would thus be the only way to transport it. Although the idea of a ship-borne bomb seems ridiculous in an age of missiles with nuclear warheads, the successful test was a major triumph for the United Kingdom’s nuclear energy programme. Today, this test is all but forgotten. Also nearly forgotten is the role the nuclear programme played in establishing the peaceful uses of nuclear power in the United Kingdom, and how intertwined these two programmes then Sir Christopher Hinton, architect of the first British atomic power stations. Photo: Courtesy of UKAEA. energize - August 2007 - Page 40 GENERATION and thus the energy released by the bomb But none of this would have been possible But unlike GLEEP, which is now in the process (Peierls,1985: 203). He also worked with Fuchs without plutonium, and the man assigned to of being decommissioned (Ref.9;1-2), on the implosion problem, central to the coordinate its production, Christopher Hinton. the F-1 is still reportedly being used, to building of the plutonium bomb. He was also And, as we shall see, it was no coincidence calibrate neutron flux detectors. When in involved in planning the height the bombs that Hinton designed the first nuclear power use, between 1947 and 1990, GLEEP had should be dropped on their targets. station in Britain, Calder Hall (Ref. 7;1-6). a typical power output of 3 kW, slightly more than that of an electric kettle. Despite this On 27 April 1945, Penney was the only Briton GLEEP, the first reactor in Europe low power level, this research reactor was on the ten-man Target Committee that drew “GLEEP (Graphite Low Energy Experimental very successful at its key function, namely up the list of potential targets in Japan for the Pile)…was the first nuclear reactor built in calibrating instruments and testing the atom bomb. Later he moved to Tinian, one Europe, established in 1947, but its uses were purity of materials being used for larger, of the Malvinas islands, to assist in planning not all peaceful.” The Guardian, 2 June, 2004 more powerful reactors. On its “time off”, and debriefing the bombing missions to (Ref. 10; 1-3) Hiroshima and Kokura. Nagasaki was only on week-ends, GLEEP was used to make radioactive isotopes. bombed because the aiming point in Kokura At the time GLEEP was being built in 1946, was obscured by smoke (Wheeler,K. 1983: another reactor was being built whose uses GLEEP even had a small railway running 99-101). were far from peaceful. In Moscow, the first through the lower part of the reactor’s core. Penney was on an aircraft that witnessed the reactor to go critical in the USSR started The “Danger Coefficient Train” was used bombing of Nagasaki. Later, together with operating on 25 December 1946 (see “The to measure “the purities of uranium fuels, some American specialists, he spent days Road to Chernobyl: Kurchatov, the F-1 and boron, and cadmium control rods” and walking the streets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chelyabinsk-40”). This reactor, called F-1, several “hundreds of tons of graphite” used studying the damage and collecting samples was used to test materials and operating to construct reactors in the UK. procedures used in Cheliabinsk-40, the of the destruction for later study. Building GLEEP, the first reactor in Europe, was industrial-scale production reactor built later no easy job, especially in post-war Britain in On 1 January 1946, he was appointed to produce plutonium for the Soviet nuclear 1947, where many materials (even steel) “Caesar” (CSAR, chief superintendent of programme. Armament Research), a post which he was then in short supply. So important was knew would soon carry the responsibility for Like F-1, GLEEP was also used to test the GLEEP considered that the then British prime developing Britain’s atomic bomb. This he materials and operating procedures for a minister, Clement Atlee, ordered reinforcing did with great distinction, later supervising larger production reactor, (then being built steel bars intended for repairing the Houses the development of Britain’s first hydrogen at Windscale), to produce plutonium. Both of Parliament (damaged by German air raids bomb. GLEEP and the F-1 did not produce electricity. in World War II) to be diverted to GLEEP. energize - August 2007 - Page 41 GENERATION Another material in very short supply was Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial to ensure that there is sufficient duplication uranium, so “the outer part of the core, power station? and diversity in the cooling systems to ensure weighing 26 tonnes, was made up of that coolant loss is effectively impossible: “It must be realised that Calder Hall was built aluminium cans containing uranium dioxide something Rickover’s designers of pressurised essentially for the production of plutonium, pellets wrapped in paper.” The central core water reactors had learned to do by the time and that electrical power was generated contained twelve tonnes of uranium, made the ‘Nautilus’ was launched in 1955. only as a by-product” (Hinton, 1958:33) up of “one inch [diameter uranium] bars The core of a gas-cooled reactor will also one foot long”. At first, these bars were not Depending on what source you consult, melt if its coolant is lost. However, there is no covered by metal cladding. no fewer than three nuclear power stations risk there in overheating of water suddenly are recorded as being the first to produce However, there were concerns that, if GLEEP expanding ca 2000 times in volume as it turns electricity for commercial use: Obninsk 5 were to be used at its full design power of to steam and causing an explosion. Largely MWe, USSR (27 June 1954), Calder Hall 4 x 50 100 kW on weekends to make radioisotopes, for this reason, Hinton opted for gas-cooled MWe, UK (17 October,1956), and Shippingport then unclad uranium rods might “produce reactors in his designs. 60 MWe (December 1957, USA). But the first highly radioactive fission products that could actual demonstration (in the USA) of nuclear- Soon after GLEEP had become operational contaminate the surrounding air”. generated electricity was in 1951, when four and the first Magnox cladding designed, Klaus Fuchs was asked to check the light bulbs were lit by electricity from the EBR-1 Hinton made a second discovery: “We came calculations (done by a Dr.
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