EDF Energy Hinkley Point C
The First Nuclear Power Station in the past 2 decades.
This visitor centre is filled with numerous scale models, that will teach you how EDF Energy will produce enough low-carbon power to facilities over 6 million homes. Take an up close look into the UK’s latest nuclear power station.
A dedicated learning centre for a milestone in the nuclear power industry.
We were asked by EDF to build a number of interactives based on the designs produced by Smith and Jones, for the new visitor centre at Hinkley Point C. Each had to be carefully considered to be fun and engaging, but also able to help explain the process of how a nuclear power station works.
We built model of the building that would allow us to light individual internal components and the outer shell, we used clear acrylic to float each component in mid-air, which allows any user to clearly identify each part.
For illumination we chose a combination of LED and Fibre optics, the actual components were a combination of 3D printed plastics and hand machined alloys, each carefully produced and crafted to simplify but truly represent the actual article.
Alongside the reactor building we built a cutaway nuclear reactor core model in more detail, which exposes the very heart of the reactor core for the user to clearly see and be able to study in depth. Each of the interactives are mounted on a bespoke CNC cut frames with full Hi-Mac cladding to create circular tables, which all have a touch foil embedded under the surface, allowing touch interactivity with the models.
To the side of the main table is satellite table which has a more hands on interactive, this table has a Geiger counter with radioactive elements in the tabletop that the user can scan and take a reading, then put a choice of multiple barrier discs in front to see the effectiveness of each barrier substance.