Electricity
Taming the phenomenon that caused lightning began with the Greeks, who discovered that if they rubbed a stick of amber (Electricus is latin for 'amber-ilke') on the local cat it became attractive to feathers - not a very useful prospect, but it was a start.
In 1800, Voltaire produced the first steady current with his batteries, and twenty years later a chap called Hans Oersted discovered quite by chance that a wire carrying an electric current upset his compass. The relationship between electricity and magnetism was no longer a secret, and the Greek cat was out of its amber bag! The rest, as they say, is history.
Electricity was a pretty difficult MoM challenge as the subject is so very big. It was one of the most requested titles, however, so we had to tackle it - and did so by covering the practical aspects of its generation and use. The scale of the engineering at both power stations was awesome. Dungeness B was under construction in 1966 and began generating in earnest in 1983. Dungensess A, the older reactor next door, stopped work in 2006 and is now being decommissioned by Magnox South. It is expected that Dungeness B will carry on working into 2018, by which time the 'C' unit may well be up and running. Most nuclear power stations are built on the coast because they generate so much heat that it is good to have an almost infinite source of cooling water available. Apparently the reactor creates about 3 GigaWatts: 1 GigaWatt comes out as electricity, another GigaWatt warms up the sea (something the local wildlife seemed to thrive on), but what happens to the other GigaWatt was not clear to us. We're sure, however, that you will find the answer somewhere on the owner's website. Nuclear power accounts for about 20% of the UK's 100 GigaWatt electrical need.
Romney Marsh is an odd place to visit: a mix of pebbled beaches, bird sanctuary, lonely cottages, and nuclear power stations! It is beautiful, too, but not as lovely as the Welsh mountains that house the other power station we concentrated on - Dinorwig. It was at Dinorwig that we discovered one of the National Grid's big secrets. Apparently there are legions of experts working to calculate just how much electricity the UK will need... and when. They look at weather forecasts, school holiday times, TV schedules, and a host of other factors that affect demand. From experience they try to forecast just how much electricity must be generated, and they book it in advance from the 100 or so power stations across the UK that need to be fired up or shut down accordingly. To cope with the fact that it takes days to stop and start some stations, or the fact that sometimes things go wrong, Dinorwig (which can be started up and shut down in seconds) is used to stabilise the voltage on the grid across the whole of the UK!
The first cut of The Magic of Making Electricity was fine, but it occurred to us that we should really see what was going on inside the machinery! So, after a bit of research we found the perfect solution at Cotswold Heritage Steam Models. Our trip to this wonderful emporium, run by a chap called Nick Butcher, was really worth-while, and did a huge amount to make sense of all those magnificent images in the power stations.
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Production Notes
Locations:
Cotswold Heritage (models), Worcestershire;
Dungeness B Nuclear Power Station, Romney Marsh, Kent;
Dinorwig Hydro-Electric Power Station, Llanberis, North Wales.