Dungeness B Power station is now fully back on line following a £30 Million pound ‘Service’. The three yearly service and check up came to an end this week as work came to an end and the station was deemed ready to go back online
• Reactor back online after 16-week planned maintenance project
• Double the workers on site from 550 to 1,285 at its peak
• Around 11,000 separate pieces of work completed
Unit 22* at Dungeness B power station is producing low carbon power again following a period of planned maintenance on the reactor and machinery.
Each of the two units at Dungeness B is shut down every three years for a statutory outage when the reactor is switched off to allow the team to inspect and maintain the plant. It’s a bit like an M.O.T. for the power station and takes years of meticulous planning due to the high number of people on site and jobs to be completed.
EDF Energy has spent more than £30 million on this planned programme of maintenance works.
It included taking out and inspecting turbines, inspecting graphite within the core of the reactor and maintaining equipment that’s usually used 24 hours a day to generate low-carbon electricity. Two unit transformers were replaced as part of the lifetime extension programme, following the announcement earlier this year that Dungeness B is set to continue operating until 2028.
Steve Coates, plant manager at Dungeness B power station said: “I’m extremely proud of the team here and want to thank Dungeness B staff, EDF Energy colleagues from around the other power stations and all our many contracting partners for their professionalism and will to succeed. This year we have produced some of the best results ever seen in an outage at Dungeness B and once again, our safety record has been excellent.”
