Tom Greatrex reflects on the dome lift at Unit 2 of Hinkley Point C
No witness to the lifting of the containment dome at Hinkley Point C can help being struck by the immense scale of the operation: a dome larger than Wren’s at St Paul’s Cathedral being lifted by the world’s largest crane, with painstaking precision high above the Somerset fields. It is a fitting enough metaphor for the scale of the project itself. Hinkley Point C is the greatest single infrastructure project in British history. It is the largest building site in Europe and the greatest single source of industrial demand in our country. When completed, it will be the most significant action to halt climate change and guarantee energy security, that we have ever taken.
Watching all the workers play their part in the dome lift, I am reminded that all over the country, Hinkley Point C is a powerful engine of economic growth and industrial revival. The project has brought work and jobs to steel factories in South Wales, opened nuclear manufacturing hubs in North Wales, seen precision ductwork manufactured in Jarrow, and sluice gates made on Teesside. The project has allowed local young people to train as welders in Bridgwater, steelfixers and crane operatives, with a whole National College for Nuclear stood up on the back of the project, and engineers of every kind at work in Warrington, Bristol and beyond on every stage of nuclear design.
The dome lift itself, with more than 20 companies playing their own role, is a fitting tribute to this monumental effort to revive the UK’s nuclear sector capability and to rebuild a nuclear workforce that can take a programme decades into the future. It is also testament to the ongoing innovation and creativity at work in this most challenging of infrastructure projects. The dome itself is made of 38 panels, pre-fabricated in factory conditions off-site, and then shipped to site where they were welded into one in an on-site factory. This is pre-fabrication and modularisation at work on a large-scale reactor, and it will generate valuable lessons that can be used for all of the future programme, large and small.
In part driven by that ethos of pre-fabrication and modularisation, Unit 2 at Hinkley Point C is proceeding about 20-30% faster than Unit 1. That is hard evidence that replication works. It is not a purely theoretical argument. It is a practical argument for going ahead with the joint greatest and greenest single project in British history, Hinkley Point C’s replica and sister station, Sizewell C. Every benefit that Hinkley Point C will deliver – jobs, investment, emissions reduction, energy security – Sizewell C will deliver as well. On top of that, it will sprinkle gold dust by preserving and enhancing the critical experience in executing nuclear construction more quickly and more cheaply that we have earned at Hinkley Point C. Given the scale of our ambition as a country, to usher in a new nuclear age, there is no substitute for that.
The work goes on at Hinkley Point C: indeed, like Wren’s St Paul’s, it is a double-dome design, with another one still to come on each unit. The project is moving into the Mechanical, Electrical and Heating phase, where it again will pave the way for the rest of the UK programme. So to the workers who have made this achievement possible ,thank you, and keep at it. And to the rest of us, replication works. Let’s do it.
Tom Greatrex is Chief Executive of the Nuclear Industry Association
