Nuclear Flasks by road

Are they shipping these by road rather than rail now? Saw one today on the A12 in Essex, never seen one on the road before.

8wheels:
Are they shipping these by road rather than rail now? Saw one today on the A12 in Essex, never seen one on the road before.

I bet if I bought one it would still be cold before I got to drink it.

I used to see two BNFL flatbeds with flasks on parked in Rugby truck stop ever week.

8wheels:
Are they shipping these by road rather than rail now? Saw one today on the A12 in Essex, never seen one on the road before.

As far as i know they’ve been doing it for years alongside rail. BNFL did have their own in house road transport, latterly that was subbed out to Bowkers that i know of. Maybe others too, not sure on that.

Bowkers and Barkers carry the flasks and there is one other company, didn’t Ainsworth and Martin do them at one time.

The ‘empties’ are certainly carried by road.

Did a story on it when the transport was ‘in house’ many years ago for Trucking.

The train pulling the ‘fulls’ out of Berkley used to come past our house in the middle of the night. If it had to stop at the signal it make a massive noise as it pulled away again.

What’s a flask? A silo?

Flask.jpg

FarnboroughBoy11:
What’s a flask? A silo?

This is one,dont know how old the pic is?
I remember years ago they put one on a rail line and crashed an old Deltic into it to prove they were safe for the road.

Spent fuel from the Wylfa reactors on Anglesey were/are carried by road to a specially built railhead at Valley.It used to be done ‘in-house’ so to speak,by the old CEGB,using a flask very similar to the one in Montmerency’s picture.

Nuclear waste? Its been done by road for years- Econofreight had the contract for a long while to Sellafield from Holland Now another company has it, but it is not the sort of job you advertise as doing,
I will say that I know that due to its “delicate” nature it paid enough for a dedicated heavy haulage trailer 5 axle to be assigned to the job and sit there for months not moving and when it did move it was always done on very short notice as far as the drivers were concerned. There are very few private companies that have ever achieved the standards to carry high grade Nuclear waste- even less that are now licenced too carry weapons grade Nuclear material, but it may surprise you that almost all of these movements are done by private companies not the MOD

And I do know who some of the companies are… but not saying on a public forum

I wouldn’t name the companies either.

DRS do all the rail movements, in fact I believe DRS was originally (and might still be) owned by BNFL and set up to shift nuclear stuff, with a collection of antiquated diesels in the main.

Used to watch the convoys on the A66 past embleton about 25 years ago. The flashing lights would light my bedroom up on a dark night!

But where does it go? If its nuclear waste it can’t be put into a rubbish tip or filtered into the sea can it?
How dangerous actually is it?

It goes to Sellafield and is stored in controlled conditions.

Years ago some of it did end up in the sea, which made the Irish very cross (Sellafield was called Windscale in those days).

The original idea was to make atomic bombs out of it…now we are trying to stop people from making atomic bombs out of it!

It will be perfectly safe in about 100,000 years!

As ricki mentions done privatly and proper flasks you wont see as the makers of the flask insist that it is coverd with sheets ever if goibg few mile down the road all get loaded indoors and driver is moniterd 24/7 no phones on site etc security is to another level . We do few of them last one moved had been in the making for nearly.2yrs Nd had a further year in production till completed . Only.info we get is the dimenshions and that it weighted 62ton . All hush hush or greenpeace.start camping outside to try take pictures . But there is few heavy haulage sides that move protertype stuff

Hiya remember years ago they had the range rovers at the back of the convoy with the massive aerial type things on the roof
fastened down on each back corner.

I reckon this was an empty as thinking back I don’t think it was placarded.

If was deffo a flask on a stepframe though, two spare wheels on the trailer and a white wendy house CF on the front made it stand out as being different enough to catch my eye.

A12 in Essex is not a power station to railhead route either.

How dangerous is this stuff ?
Say it leaked how much damage could it do ?