31 August 2008   Magnox North

Wylfa’s Reactor Two returned to service this week, following the successful completion of its biennial outage to carry out maintenance and inspection work.

This year’s outage began on 9th April, lasting 135 days and involving almost 160,000 man hours and utilising the services of 28 contractors to deliver the work which is essential to the continued safe operation of the site.

The types of work included in this year’s outage has varied from repairs to the 7 tonne pile cap crane, to maintenance of the cooling water system – which pumps 52 Million gallons of water round the site each year.

The plant began raising power again on Tuesday 19th August and by Friday (22nd August) had reached 950 Mw of electricity – which is exported to the national grid.

Site Director, Greg Evans, said: “I’m extremely proud of the contribution made by all site staff and contractors in delivering a safe and successful outage.

“An outage is always an extremely busy and important period at Wylfa, but I’m delighted to be able to confirm that we’ve completed the work safely, to schedule and to cost – now we’re re-focussed on the job of generating electricity.”

Wylfa is one of ten Magnox sites at various stages of their operational lifecycle being managed by EnergySolutions on behalf of the owners, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).