Torness Nuclear Power Station & British Energy

On Friday we visited the Torness Nuclear Power Station, a 1250 MW plant in Dunbar. It's owned by British Energy, a subsidiary of EDF, a large French energy company. Like most of the existing nuclear plants in the UK, the technology used is an advanced gas cooled reactor. This is a unique nuclear technology, and we learned the basic technical differences between it and the more widely used pressurized water reactor system (that is currently in use at the Cook and Palisades nuclear plants in Michigan). In the UK, the spent nuclear fuel is sent by rail to the Sellafield reprocessing facility in Cumbria, in northern England. The fuel is recyclable, and some of the waste is currently turned into glass and buried in Cumbria. The UK government currently looking for more long-term storage in geologic formations and has asked communities to volunteer. According to British Energy, a few communities have shown interest in taking on the nuclear waste (including Cumbria).

The visit was really informative - both about nuclear technology generally, and in particular about the impact of public policy on the financing of new large baseload power plants. We had a great couple of sessions with top BE executives and a lot of give and take on some difficult energy regulatory issues. I love thinking about these issues...and hope to sort some of my thoughts out - perhaps in a law review article sometime in the future.