Linklater's Scotland

I HAVE a photograph on my bookshelf that I treasure. Taken in 1987, it shows my mother marching down the streets of Dunbar alongside a youthful and bearded Robin Cook. Behind them is a banner that reads 'Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace. Nuclear Power? No Thanks.' The atomic menace they were campaigning against was the proposed Torness Power Station, just a few miles down the coast. My mother would doubtless be appalled to learn that, 20 years on, Torness is not only seen as the respectable face of Scottish energy, it is well on its way to gaining recognition as a symbol of the future.

From Tony Blair downwards, the attitude towards nuclear energy is changing, from outright opposition to acceptance and even enthusiasm. Veteran environmental guru James Lovelock, whose books about Gaia, as he calls the Earth system, have chronicled the threat of global warming, says that going nuclear is the only way ahead if we wish to fill the energy gap and reduce CO2 emissions. Support for wind farms is declining, while wave energy is still a distant goal. As the oil runs out, so nuclear power climbs back up the agenda. Next month Jack McConnell will pay his first official visit to Torness, as the Scottish Executive teeters on the brink of embracing the once unthinkable.
You can't miss it as you travel south, down the A1 - it's the white colossus on your left, looking out to sea towards Bass Rock. Windowless, featureless, anonymous, it could only be a power station. A signpost reads 'Welcome to Torness'. But that welcome is qualified.

The first thing you see after you sign in, collect an electronic pass and are let grudgingly through a security gate, are the nuclear police, or Civil Nuclear Constabulary, fully armed and ready for anything. "Everything changed after 9/11," says station director Willie Waddell. "We used to have 13,000 people through the building every year before that happened - they could virtually come in off the street. Now we have to regulate visits."

We talk in his spacious office, which has views over the North Sea and a presentation fuel rod on the windowsill. I pick it up gingerly. "Don't worry," says Waddell, "it's harmless. In fact, you could pick it up even when it has uranium pellets in it. They're not radioactive until we put them into the reactor core."

This emphasis on safety is to become a theme running through our visit - safety, cleanliness and regulations that govern everything from your hard hat, ear-plugs, goggles, stout shoes and gloves to the instructions about holding on to hand-rails and closing security doors behind you. "If we left one of them open," says Waddell, "it would have to be reported to the Nuclear Inspectorate as an 'incident'. Safety is the most important issue I deal with."

Well, not quite. The most important issue he deals with is the power generated by the two vast Torness turbines, which, along with their opposite numbers at the Advanced Gas Reactor at Hunterston B, supply almost 35% of the electricity produced in Scotland. Much of this is exported, but any calculation of Scotland's electricity needs will have to take into consideration the fact that these two nuclear stations account for just under 50% of Scotland's electricity needs, and that this can rise to as much as 80% in summer. Finding a substitute for them, as they reach the end of their lives in less than 20 years, will take some doing.

The principles of nuclear power are the same for most types of reactor, although the methods of production vary. At Torness, fuel rods are filled with pellets of uranium oxide and packed inside a cylindrical element, surrounded by graphite. These are then placed inside the steel-encased moderator, which is lowered deep into the core of the reactor. It is here that continuous nuclear fission takes place, as the atoms of the elements they contain are split, producing energy in the form of a gas.

Our first port of call is the turbine hall, filled with thundering noise and dominated by two gigantic machines, each as big as a locomotive, which generate the power of Scotland. Huge silvery pipes snake around them, carrying steam from the reactor, driving the turbines and generating electricity. "It's like something out of James Bond, isn't it?" says one of the workers. In truth, though, it is reassuringly like some great engine-room from the industrial age, its proportions heavy, solid and clearly built to last - Watt or Stevenson would have felt themselves immediately at home here.

One of the turbines stands still while men crawl all over it. It has been closed down for servicing, a process that happens every three years and takes 45 days. Waddell eyes it anxiously. It is costing his company, British Energy, £800,000 a day in lost production, and there is still a week to go before it is functioning again.

Three years ago the whole plant had to close down, when one of the massive cooling-fans shattered inside its heavy casing, setting off alarms and shutting down the system automatically. It was the biggest incident Waddell has ever had to confront at Torness, and the fact that he tells me about it within five minutes of sitting down shows the impact it must have had. "There was absolutely no danger to the reactor," he says. But the plant lost a third of one year's output - a massive financial setback for a privatised industry.

Next we climb high up to the viewing balcony, from where we can look down on the reactor itself. This is a huge disappointment. I don't know what I was expecting - men in strange spacesuits? Buzzing Geiger counters? There is, in fact, nothing to be seen. The only clue to what is going on deep beneath us is the circular cap, which looks like a giant drain cover. Because the whole area is monitored constantly for any sign of radioactivity, and because none has been detected in Torness's 18-year-life, there is no indication of the ferment that is taking place beneath its surface.

Only occasionally, when there is maintenance to be carried out on the moderator, do workers approach the reactor, and then they do so inside what look like reinforced Portakabins, wearing protective clothing. The most dramatic aspect of the reactor site are huge cranes that move along overhead rails, lowering live fuel cells into the reactor and removing spent fuel, which is cooled down over 100 days in what is in effect a giant swimming pool.

So what about the nuclear waste? The leftovers in each element are mixed with glass and encased in a small disc, which Waddell describes as being the size of a hockey puck. Torness produces 500 of these a year, which are transported south, to Sellafield.

Of course, that is not the end of the story. When, in about 2023, Torness reaches the end of its life, as the graphite moderator is gradually worn down, the whole of the reactor core - all 1,200 tons of it - will have to be buried and kept intact for 80 years. Whether that can be done safely, and in such a way as to satisfy public opinion, is a question that will confront us all eventually. We may not have much time. Waddell points out that the process for planning, commissioning and installing the next generation of reactors could take at least 12 years. He has the site for a new one, right next door to Torness, but whether the political will is there to take the decision remains to be seen.

As we leave, we pass the great control-room, where a lone figure is peering at some giant dials. "He's the most important man in this building," says Waddell. "He is there to ensure a constant supply of power, and he would be the first to see if things were not as they should be. In the end it's a human being who has the final responsibility." Jack McConnell, please take note.