British Energy’s flagship Sizewell B power station confirmed its place among the world’s best nuclear operators following a successful ninth refuelling outage.

Sizewell B operated for 516 days (from 21 October 2006 to 20 March 2008) - a second successive record of continuous operation for the plant - before coming off-line and completing its refuelling outage in 25 days, the station’s shortest outage to date.

“We continue to demonstrate that modern nuclear reactors such as Sizewell B are safe, reliable forms of low carbon electricity, which is hugely important to the UK,” said Brian Dowds, Sizewell B station director.

“This has been very much a team effort. The focus and dedication shown by the staff at Sizewell B, British Energy and our many partner companies has been extremely pleasing.”

Turbine 2 returned to service on Tuesday 15 April followed on Wednesday 16 April by turbine 1 and is now back supplying enough electricity for around 2 million homes.

“Refuelling outages are always busy periods for us and for the area so I thank our neighbours in the local community for their support and patience over the last few months,” Brian Dowds added.

“We can now focus on safely providing around 3% of the UK’s electricity needs while starting to make preparations for our tenth refuelling outage in some 18 months time.”

The station also celebrated its safety performance after being awarded the Presidents award from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), following 10 consecutive gold medals for excellent and improving industrial safety performance.

British Energy staff at Sizewell B have gone 679 days since the last lost time accident* and over 1397 days since a lost time accident by any of BE’s contracting partners at the station.

 “While this excellent generation performance was being achieved, we also managed to gain a safety award which proves the point that the safest power stations are the highest performing,” added Brian Dowds.

* A lost time accident is an absence of one day or more resulting from an injury incurred during an accident - generally in UK industry a less stringent three day or more criteria is used.