The station, which cost around £143m to build, first came online in 1976 and is located six miles south of Largs on Scotland’s west coast. The French-state owned EDF Energy, which runs the plant, announced last summer that defueling the station would begin no later than today as the first step in the nuclear decommissioning process.
In 2012, EDF estimated that the plant could technically and economically operate until 2023, but it hastened its closure by a year with the defueling announcement.
It has faced a series of technical faults over its lifespan, with the first incident occurring in 1977, just 18 months after it first started generating.
In that incident it was reported that seawater had entered the reactor through a modification of the secondary cooling system which was designed to only use fresh water to cool parts of the reactor.
In February 1997, there was concern that contaminated carbon dioxide gas from the plant had entered three road tankers...