Torness nuclear power station is about to undergo a nine-week maintenance programme costing £28m. That will yield a boost for businesses in East Lothian and Berwickshire too as more than 600 additional staff will be joining the 750-strong workforce at the EDF Energy power station. One of the two reactors at the power plant was taken offline last Friday for the nine-week duration of the works. EDF Energy carries out a statutory outage on each of its reactors every three years. During the outage, workers will carry out more than 12,000 separate pieces of work, all carefully planned during the last two years of preparation. The biggest projects include inspections of the reactor vessel internals, exchange of the turbine high-pressure rotor and replacement of auxiliary cooling water pipework systems. Station director, Paul Winkle, said: “This is the first statutory outage since we announced last year that Torness will continue to produce low carbon electricity until 2030 – an additional seven years. “The outage will give us the chance to do inspections and carry out pieces of work that are not possible when the reactor is operating.
Berwickshire News 12th April 2017 read more »