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Hunterston Nuclear Generating Station, 'a' Power Station
Power Station (20th Century)
Site Name Hunterston Nuclear Generating Station, 'a' Power Station
Classification Power Station (20th Century)
Alternative Name(s) Hunterston 'a' Power Station; Hunterston Nuclear Generating Station
Canmore ID 79623
Site Number NS15SE 28.01
NGR NS 18155 51235
NGR Description Centred NS 18155 51235
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/79623
- Council North Ayrshire
- Parish West Kilbride
- Former Region Strathclyde
- Former District Cunninghame
- Former County Ayrshire
Hunterston A: a 'glazed mass' by Howard V Lobb & Partners, 1957-64.
R Close 1992.
See also:
NS15SE 28.02 Centred NS 18542 51491 'B' Power Station
Construction (1957 - 1964)
Scotland's first nuclear power station. Built for South of Scotland Electricity Board. Closed 1990. Decommissioning completion predicted for 2017.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Publication Account (1997)
The first civilian nuclear power station in the country: a 360 megawatt plant originally designed to supply approximately a quarter of the total electricity demand in the SSEB area. The station comprises two natural uranium-fuelled, graphite-moderate, gas cooled 'MAGNOX' reactors, together with associated steam-raising units, situated adjacent to a turbine house and control room. Uniquely, the reactors here were loaded and unloaded from below, and as a result are perched high above ground level, in gigantic but elegant curtain-walled, steel-framed blocks. The station was closed in 1990. (Figs. 4.65, 4.66).
Information from 'Rebuilding Scotland: The Postwar Vision, 1945-75', (1997).
Project (2007)
This project was undertaken to input site information listed in 'Civil engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' by R Paxton and J Shipway, 2007.
Publication Account (2007)
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.
