The Scottish Research Reactor Centre at East Kilbride was opened by Sir John Cockroft, Master of Churchill College, Cambridge. The SRRC was Britain's first nuclear reactor for training and research and was shared by Scotland's five universities and Queen's University, Belfast.
Don't know if any details might turn up as relates to specific location and type.
Training and research suggests some sort of specific design for purpose, given where it was, and probably of relatively low power.
Need to find out when it was decommissioned/removed.
Mr. Ingram: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on land ownership and lease arrangements applying to the experimental nuclear reactor sites operated by the Scottish universities research and reactor centre at the former national engineering laboratory in East Kilbride. [18065]
Mr. Kynoch [holding answer 4 March 1996]: Ownership of the site of the former National Engineering Laboratory at East Kilbride now rests with Scottish Enterprise. The lease arrangements which apply to that site are an operational matter for that organisation. I will ask the chairman of Scottish Enterprise to write to the hon. Member.
Decommissioning:
The decommissioning of a 300 kW Argonaut type universities research reactor and associated facilities has been completed at the Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre. The strategy adopted for the demolition of the reactor and its ancillary plant and buildings is discussed. One of the principal areas of the work was the effort expended on the determination of the radioisotope abundance of the reactor structure and thereby its impact on the characterization of waste for disposal and the radiation dose budget for personnel. Extensive use was made of remotely operated vehicles to minimize this dose.
$30 to buy, so I won't be dipping into this document for any more details.
Journal Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part E: Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering Publisher Professional Engineering Publishing ISSN 0954-4089 Issue Volume 219, Number 1 / 2005 DOI 10.1243/095440805X7026 Pages 15-26
In the interests of accuracy was it not Pirniehall rather than Birniehall?
I went there once in the 60s. Didn't know about the reactor but I am sure I read about it later as it seems to ring a bell. I remember going into an achroic chamber or some such. A strange experience as it totally absorbed sound. They also had a Triumph Herald converted to hydraulic drive with a motor on each wheel and had got to the point where the hydraulic power was supplied through the suspension members. I wonder what happened to it?
Just been talking to the wife as shes from East Kilbride and she told me her dad had told her several times about there being a micro nuclear power plant at the NEL
but she just put it down to his telling of tall tales when he's had few too many pints of belhaven best
Anechoic chambers funny thing about them is they work as well for sound as radio. Great the first time you walk in thinking radio - and your ears protest momentarily as all you normal echoes disappear too
Cute idea with the Herald. That drive system is used today to gain ground clearance. I'm struggling to think of a practical reason for driving an ordinary car that way though. Slow and lossy, unless it was some sort of alternative 4-wheel-drive system, avoiding the usual gearbox and differential problem of the primitive systems still being developed then.
Note...
The Bird's Eye view of the Technology Park is superb, and shows the former Cold War building that now houses the site's archives to good effect now that all the trees have been removed from around it, and the ground cleared and landscaped.
It's worth noting that there's nothing unusual or particularly interesting (other than to us ) about this facility at the former NEL (National Engineering Laboratory), and the Argonaut class reactor which was sited there is a design of small nuclear research reactor, of which many are reported to have been built throughout the world, over a wide range of power levels.
Its functions are to teach nuclear reactor theory, nuclear physics and for use in engineering laboratory experiments.
This generally means it would have been used to produce items such medical isotopes, and for the irradiation of samples for test and analysis.
The operating principles of the device mean it has no significant military or covert applications. Nowadays, paranoia promoted by the government's "War on Terror" is more likely to cause such facilities to become attractive as soft-targets where materials could be relatively easily obtained to create the so-called dirty-bomb which gets more publicity now that it used to before the "war" was declared.
The original Argonaut (Argonne Nuclear Assembly for University Training) was built at Argonne National Laboratory and went critical for the first time on February 9, 1957. It was shut down in 1972, and only rated at 10 kW, as compared to the NEL's 300 kw for a reactor built around 6 years later.
Re the Triumph Heraald, the answer is in your message Apollo. It was to develope a four wheel drive vehicle with no moving parts eg. propshaft underneath. The Herald was chosen because it had a chassis and the bodywork could be cut away as required by the plumbing etc.. It was also thought that 4 wheel drive would beecome more mainstream in motoring ( I guess it has but not by hydraulics). Other expected benefits were no need for a gear box (weight saving) and a smoother vibration free ride. The engine and hydraulic pump were suspended in the engine bay, the hydraulics being connected by rubber hoses.
Thought the 4-wheel-drive option would be the reason, although I don't recall ever hearing about any work at the NEL.
It was an idea that was dead before it started, as they forgot that for a given power at wheels, the engine has to produce not only that power, but enough to make up the losses for the transmission system connection the engine (whether that is internal/external combustion, electric or whatever).
Mechanical 4WD for cars then utilised old military or truck differentials, so weighed a ton and were inefficient, although the Jensen FF did a not-bad-at-all job, but it had a 6.3 litre engine, so didn't care. And there was even a little-known FFF with a slightly larger engine, and reported to 640 BHP, so it really didn't care about lossy transmissions
While the gearbox may have been saved, the same engine was still needed, and the gearbox was simply replaced by the hydraulic pump. There was also the tiny factor of 4 hydraulic motors which had to be fitted to the wheels, and then you need a differential and control system to distribute the hydraulic drive to those wheel motors. While splitting the same power would be fine when the car was travelling in a straight line, corners, bends, and curves still need some sort of differential drive as per mechanical transmission, or the in-wheel motors will still want to make the inner and outer wheels rotate at the same speed. At best this will wear out the tyres, at worst, it will make the car spin out of control at every turn, as the inner and outer wheels need to rotate at different rates, or will slip and lose grip. Catchable in the dry, an instant skid in the wet.
This is a nasty even at low road speeds, as I can confirm after driving a car with a locked rear diff - every bend, even shallow, in the wet is approached as a thing of trepidation after you have met the first one unawares
Fascinating stuff
Scoobies, Evos, and Skylines now show the hydraulic idea was a bad idea
It was painted yellow. I asked one of the staff there if that was so no-one tripped over it. He called me a smartarse. The reactor was in the centre of a large hall, and was about the size of a small 2-storey house. It didn't generate that much power, being used mainly for research and education. I visited the SRRC a few times in 1993-1994 when studying environmental science at Strathclyde Uni and carried out some experiments there, basically getting used to measuring radioactivity and neutron activation analysis. It was quite interesting. There were a lot of lead bricks and sticky floors just inside the door of any of the areas where radioactive sources were handled. The people who worked there were really nice, although a couple of them looked a bit sickly.
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funny thing about them is they work as well for sound as radio. Great the first time you walk in thinking radio - and your ears protest momentarily as all you normal echoes disappear too 
) about this facility at the former NEL (National Engineering Laboratory), and the Argonaut class reactor which was sited there is a design of small nuclear research reactor, of which many are reported to have been built throughout the world, over a wide range of power levels.
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