LWR versus SGHWR

Abstract

In May 1969 the CEGB told the Select Committee that the HTR and SGHWR both ‘showed promise of significant economic advantages on the AGR’.¹ The great development potential of the AGR was no longer talked of. The CEGB preferred the HTR; it promised lower costs, greater long-term economies, could be a direct source of high temperature process heat for industry, and, being gas-cooled, would use familiar technologies. They thought the remaining technical problems could be solved quickly, and that it could ‘probably be ordered in the next year or two’.² In 1970 the CEGB called for tenders to be submitted in April 1970 for an HTR to be built at Oldbury.³