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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 606416
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/606416
Hunterston ‘A’, Scotland’s first nuclear power station, was built from 1957–64 for the South of Scotland Electricity Board by the General Electric Company Ltd in association with Simon Carves Ltd, the Motherwell Bridge and Engineering Company Ltd, and Mowlem (Scotland) Ltd. It was closed in 1990 and is now being decommissioned with completion predicted for 2017.
The station produced 360MW from two Magnox gascooled reactors. An idea of some of the civil engineering operations can be gained from the provision of 3000 cu. yards of mass concrete in the foundations of the first reactor supporting a raft incorporating 8000 cu. yards of concrete with 400 tons of steel reinforcement. This work, and the turbine hall excavation 650 ft by30 ft by 13 ft deep, was ongoing early in 1958.
Motherwell Bridge and Engineering Company built 16 massive heat exchangers and two 70 ft diameter spheres to house the two gas-cooled reactors in Hunterston’s twin towers. The spheres were made out of 3 in. thick steel plates, to bend which a 2000 ton press had to be built. In order to handle the plates into position the world’s largest ‘Goliath’ crane, 200 ft high, was designed, erected and tested with a 350 ton load. It was used to lower thepressure vessel tops into position.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
