Nuclear electricity generation in the UK fell 10.7% in 2000, because of the closure in May of Hinkley Point A, and unplanned and lengthy outages at a number of other magnox and AGR stations. This is according to figures recently published by the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
Besides the Hinkley Point A closure, BNFL Magnox Generation put a large portion of the decline in output down to an outage at Wylfa, which started in April 2000 and is ongoing. The outage is to fix fuel channel plugs and mechanically brace steam pipes.
These two developments accounted for a loss of more than one third of Magnox output for most of the year, said BNFL.
British Energy, operator of the UK’s seven AGR stations and Sizewell B PWR, experienced an erosion of output for the year. Output for the financial year 1998/1999 reached a record 69.13TWh, dropping to 63TWh in financial year 1999/2000. BE has named its problem stations for the period as Dungeness B, Torness and Hunterston B.
Coal-fired electricity rose by 13.8% during the same period to make up the nuclear shortfall.
