British Energy has announced the return to service of Hunterston B nuclear power station, and achievement of the target of reaching 70% power generation on both units, sufficient for the needs of around one million homes.
In what has been the company’s largest maintenance program ever, significant boiler inspection and repairs were carried out on both the advanced gas-cooled reactors.
The work on Hunterston B Reactor-3 was completed in May 2008 with power output increased from around 59% to 70%. Reactor-4 returned to service on August 16, 2008. This unit was running at around 61% before the outage and has now also successfully achieved 70% output.
During the three-month Reactor-4 outage, an investment of GBP13.7 million was made on replacing turbine rotors, pipework and general maintenance. British Energy said that it is developing strategies for raising the load beyond 70% in the future although no timescales have been agreed upon yet.
Bill Coley, British Energy’s CEO, said: I commend everyone at Hunterston B and the entire British Energy team who has supported them. This has been the largest outage British Energy has conducted and getting these units up to 70% load is testament to all the investment we are putting into the plants, improving our human performance and work processes and further enhancing our nuclear safety culture.