Electricity Supplies: Engineering Works and Safety Checks

electricity supplies: Prospects for new nuclear projects have commanded headlines and government attention in recent weeks, with Hitachi and Toshiba scrapping their plans for major new plants, according to The Guardian. But the fate of the existing plants, which usually provide about a fifth of the UK's electricity supplies, has been pulled into focus by outages due to safety checks and engineering works running over schedule. What role does nuclear power play in UK and what are alternatives Read more A temporary closure of two of the country's eight nuclear plants resulted in a double-digit drop in nuclear generation in January, compared to the same period last year. Nuclear outages also push up carbon emissions because any capacity shortfall will typically be replaced by fossil fuel power stations. Most were built with a lifetime of about 35 years in mind. Nuclear output graph Seven of the nuclear power stations use an advanced gas reactor AGR design, the oldest of which is 43 years old and the youngest 30 years. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.