#dounreay

[shadowron]

Toxic Zones in the London Sourcebook for Shadowrun (1st Edition)

Compared to automobiles, travel by airline is extraordinarily safer. When airplane disasters occur, they are newsworthy because they are so rare. Compare that to how many car crashes occur.

Compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power is extraordinarily more efficient (by fuel mass required), carbon-free, and less polluting. When nuclear accidents occur, they are newsworthy because they are so rare.

Did you know that coal-burning power plants emit radiation in the atmosphere?

Every solid, liquid, and gas that you extract from the planet contains baseline levels of radioactive nuclides (it’s why the Earth still has a molten core, after all), and just as processing and using carbon-based fuels releases trapped carbon into the atmosphere, it also releases trapped radioactivity.

Yes, nuclear power plants produce nuclear waste, but I don’t know if people really realize how small this amount is compared to the wastes produced by fossil fuels.

Let’s count down the top 5 deadliest places to live in the U.K.!

5. Scottish Nuke Zone

We begin at the top of the map:

The two nuclear power stations at Dounreay in the Scottish Highlands were constructed in the 1950s and suffered an explosion in 2011 that made the area uninhabitable to all but toxic spirits.

4. Scottish Fringe Toxic Zone

Staying in Scotland, this 20-mile-wide strip was created by a terrorism induced North Sea oil spill. So much for Aberdeen.

3. Yorkshire Fringe Zone

Is that what they’re wearing up in Yorkshire now?

2. East Anglian Stinkfens

East Anglia was not ruined by an oil spill or radioactivity, but by nitrate eutrophication due to over-farming and chemical dumping. Should your runners have a reason to visit, watch out for the corpselights.

1. Northern Toxic Zone

The largest (and unmarked on the map) zone has it all: nuke meltdowns, spouts of neurotoxic flaming gases, toxic avenging shamans, and a burgeoning Ork proto-nation around the Lake District of Northwest England.

[man-and-atom]

A general view of the PFR Fuel Dismemberment Cave during plant commissioning earlier this year. At the far end is the laser cutting head used to expose individual pins; a hydraulic pin cropping machine is in the foreground. The rebuilt plant was opened by the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, on 6 September.

Report on Progress

The Fast Reactor and Energy Supply

World Churches and Nuclear Power

Lessons from Crises

The Nuclear Power Exhibition

Nuclear Power in Switzerland

The Importance of Conservation

Book Review ("Ethics and Energy")

Obituaries (Dr GW Dolphin, Miss Sarah Kronberger)

[man-and-atom]

Cleaning tubes in the evaporator of the PFR, Dounreay

In this issue

UKAEA Annual Report

Renewable Sources of Energy ― the Prospects for Electricity

Uranium Supply & Demand

BNFL Annual Report

Nuclear Power ― the Moral Question

Nuclear Power Costs

In Parliament

[dribblesofconsciouness]

On Grandad   -   1

I sit at home alone with the dogs, and am having imaginary conversations. This is an extremely human thing that we all engage in, but rarely discuss, wherein we run through conversations in our head that we plan to have in the future, or conversations we hoped to have the courage to begin, or perhaps even just conversations we think would be interesting. Well I was having one of these about Grandad. 

My Grandad lives in an isolated small town in the far north of Scotland. He’s lived there most of his life, raised his family there after marrying a local woman. He’s smart, gruff, friendly while being scary at the same time.  I’ve only ever known him retired, he just says of his working life that he was a chemist at the nearby nuclear plant. That’s all I ever grew up hearing.  He came about in the prime era for a young man to benefit from “big government” as it would be called. 

Post-war Britain yearning for a new social contract to unite the nation and heal the battered population offered a bounty. Born in a two room fisherman’s house he describes as a slum, to generations back of working poor, he was lucky enough to have a government as well as a family that actually cared about him. His dad was a fisherman when the war started. He was a member of the Territorial Army, so off he went. When he came back, he stopped fishing, instead becoming a bricklayer, joining the scores of veterans who were now being used to build new houses and government buildings across the country. One of these buildings was the nuclear facility to which Grandad would commit his working life. For over thirty years he worked there, allowing him to retire comfortably at 56. 

He describes himself as very lucky. 

[danielmarmot]

Dounreay Power Station, Scottish Highlands, UK

[danielmarmot]

Dounreay Power Station, Scottish Highlands, UK

[danielmarmot]

Dounreay Power Station, Scottish Highlands, UK

[nineteenhundredandone]

Dounreay Fast Reactor Dome, Caithness
 (photograph: Theo Simpson)