Wednesday will be the last day for commercial power production for the last operating Magnox nuclear reactor, the Unit 1 reactor at Wylfla on the island of Anglesey in North Wales.
Just as the last day of 2014 was the shut off day for the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon, Vt., Wednesday is the last day before the final shut down for the facility in North Wales that has been producing electricity since 1971.
One hundred and fifty production jobs will end in April 2016, as the plant's operators begin a three-year plan to de-fuel the reactor. Another 500 will end by the mid-2020s, the BBC reported. Full-scale decommissioning process is not scheduled to begin until 2026.
At that point, the site will be left alone until at least 2105, according to the BBC report.
Contrary to the situation in Vermont, however, plans for a replacement plant are underway. Hitachi subsidiary Horizon Nuclear Power is working on designs for Wylfa Newydd that will be ready for review in 2017.
Horizon says it is expecting the new plant will be up and running “within the first half of the 2020s.”
Site Director Stuart Law, meanwhile, offered the BBC a eulogy for the 44-year old Wylfa plant. “It's sad that we've reached the end – sad. But a real pleasure and honor to have had this role at Wylfa and to take it as far as we have done,” he said.
It also might be an appropriate time to quote Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, among the most famous authors of his time. "Do not go gently into that good night," he wrote in a eulogy for his father. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."