AN EMERGENCY shutdown of the Torness reactors caused by a seaweed blockage has led a Borders councillor to question the value of nuclear power.
John Elliot represents Scottish Borders Council on the east coast power station's liaison committee.
He was speaking to TheSouthern after confirmation from station owners British Energy that engineers had been forced into shutting down both power-producing reactors at the 18-year-old station.
A manual shutdown was ordered early in the evening of August 2 after problems were spotted with the station's all-important cooling system.
Seaweed had blocked screening drums which had been swept in by a powerful north wind and a rising tide following a long period of warm, calm weather.
A spokeswoman for British Energy told TheSouthern: "The filters on the main cooling system became blocked. Problems with seaweed are not unknown. This was a weather issue and reactors were shut down safely.
"The station was off for a few days. It could have been back earlier but the opportunity was taken to do routine maintenance."
Experts carried out a probe into the cooling system's failure and it has been confirmed that the findings will be used to bring in improvements at other sites.
This week councillor Elliot told us: "The seaweed problem demonstrates that nuclear power is not 100 per cent reliable. The nuclear power industry makes much of its reliability of supply compared with wind farms but it can have to shut down at any time – including peak times."
Torness was built between 1980 and 1988 and began generating in May 1988. It is capable of supplying more than one million households and is due to be decomissioned in 2023.
But the Duns councillor is still unhappy, he told us: "Nuclear power stations share a problem with all large power stations in that they are an inefficient method of generating power – Torness heats the North Sea and other large power stations heat our atmosphere.
"What we need and what has been developed in other European countries are combined heat and power plants in cities and towns which provide heat to industry, industrial greenhouses, offices, hospitals and homes as well as generating electricity. This is much more efficient and reduces costs for industry and everyone else."
He added: "Large power stations require an expensive grid system – which leads to massive power losses – whereas lots of small local generating plants require a less expensive grid system and avoid massive power losses. If one small plant does have to shut down the loss is easily compensated.
"But if Torness shuts down, that is a major incident. Remember the power failure in the US and Canada because of reliance on large generation plants and an expensive grid."
In Scotland he pointed to the success of combined heat and power generation in Lerwick in the Shetlands and at Wick in Caithness.
Woking in England, he said, had developed its own off-grid electricity a number of years ago, and he hailed an area of Malmo in Sweden for generating all of its electricity and heat by renewable energy.