Severn Barrage

 

In the early 1970s I worked for a firm of consulting engineers who were proposing a much more advanced barrage for the River Severn.

Their plan involved a spine down the middle of the river, with a high lake on one side and a low lake on the other. The turbines would have been located in the spine and could also be reversed to pump water from the low to the high lake to store excess electricity.

But the plan didn’t stop there :-

1. As it ran south-west to north-east, the spine would have been ideal for a large airport, due to the direction of prevailing winds.
2. The airport would be well away from land and noise nuisance would be reduced.
Brunel’s Great Western which is dead straight for most of the way would be used to move passengers to London in about an hour.
3. Cardiff and Bristol airports would be closed.
4. Large energy users of electricity such as aluminium smelting could also be placed on the spine.
5. The barrage would provide a quick route between Cardiff and the South West.
6. The spine could be built in part from landfill and broken bottles.

It was a grandious plan and I think that today with a need for clean energy and the need to store the output of wind farms, that its time has come.