Went to look at the EDF page showing Nuclear generation and got an error. Turns out they've changed their website and the info is now at
Thanks for that. Link now fixed.
Who would want a tour of a power station? Some ex pat Iranians maybe? Brian
Actually, they have been sending out emails to me recently now I'm on their blue tarrif. they mainly are links to their web site, and guess what they links are either broken or the pages are totally inaccessible to us blind folk, and that includes the bill dislay. One could not make it up. Brian
Why not? I think the scale of the engineering would take a lot of people by surprise. Trouble is a I bet you don't get to the really interesting places or particularly "up close and personal" on a public tour.
Indeed. I have been on a tour, which was interesting, but naturally a little constrained.
I saw rather more when I was training and spent time actually inside the alternators at both Eggborough (where there was a great view from the top of the boiler house roof) and Fiddler's Ferry.
Chris
I went round a coal fired station in my youth. They had just commissioned a RR Olympus (I think) gas turbine they were rather proud of.
The coal was ground to powder in ball mills and then blown into the boiler furnace. The generating hall was impressive.
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I'd love to go on one. Many years ago I did get to tour the (then) CEGB control centre in London.
I've done both the Ffestiniog and the Dinorwic PSP stations (in that order[1]). I'm not sure if they're still offering such tours at the smaller Ffestiniog station but if you're interested in the technical details of pumped storage, this is the better tour since it's given by an actual engineer rather than a "Tour Guide".
The scale at Ffestiniog isn't anywhere near as 'Grand' as Dinorwig where they use 'Tour Guides' to 'explain' what's on show in the turbine hall in a more 'slickly' commercialised operation.
If you're not too interested in the technical detail, the Dinorwic station offers the more visually impressive tour experience, otherwise (if they're still running) a tour at the Ffestiniog station is the more satisfying to those with a greater appreciation of the technicalities.
[1] I might have been less _unimpressed_ by the commercialised tour at Dinorwic if I had done that one before doing the Ffestiniog one.
Was that south of the river ?
When I worked in British Gas central control we had a friendly exchange visit ... their control room was very high tech (the BG one had lights for running compressors that were switched on from a panel under the desk !). However the leccy engineers were jealous of the ability of the gas grid to use linepack (upping the pressure in the main grid) as a cheap storage buffer. One of the reasons there are so few gasometers about nowadays.
Going for an interview at Sellafield, in the 80s, you got quite a tour. It was very impressive.
Mmmm... upset a lot of landowners to have gas storage under their land without compensation.
IIRC the high pressure grid was designed in the socialist 60s ;)
Quite a beast. If I had been there longer than a year, I could have wangled a trip to the firefighting centre at Hinckley. Apparently a breach of the pipeline could throw a flame 400 metres.
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