Key maintenance work enables Hartlepool Power Station to motor on
FEATURE
Key maintenance work enables Hartlepool Power Station to motor on
NUCLEAR RESET
Maintenance – important inspections and upgrades are carried out across every aspect of Hartlepool Power Station’ s systems every 18 months.
PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
Hartlepool Power Station is currently carrying out a huge volume of maintenance on one of its two reactor units. Like major shutdowns and overhauls that we see within the chemicals and processing industries on Teesside, these are referred to as statutory outages.
This major event, that takes two years to plan, sees more than 1,200 people on site each day for 10 weeks working to safely deliver a £ 40m investment.
Hartlepool Power Station’ s strategic outage manager, Andy Havlin, explains more …
When visitors come to Hartlepool Power Station, top of their list is walking across the reactors. To say you’ ve stood in one of the handful of places in the world you can have the unique experience of standing on top of an operating nuclear reactor, while it generates enormous amounts of power, is indeed quite the experience.
That said, despite the excitement that naturally comes with knowing nuclear fission is taking place below your feet, coupled with the sheer height of the reactor building and scale of the fuelling machine, your imagination is needed as there is very little to hear or see.
Much of what our visitors see is a series of squares under which the atoms are split and the heat which drives our turbines is released.
Which is why whenever anyone comes to Hartlepool we take them to our Turbine Hall.
And stepping in there it is hard not to be amazed. You are confronted with a deafening roar, a wall of heat as steam is pushed through two giant turbines and an eye-popping tangle of pipes, conduits and channels moving heat, steam and water around so we can generate electricity as efficiently as possible.
This is why when visitors on site tours reach the Turbine Hall, and must don their ear protection, they crack enormous
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