Sizewell B completed its latest refuelling outage in 30 days, its fastest ever. The 1250MWe PWR’s refuelling and general maintenance outage, which ended 29 May, came after an 18 month run.

At the height of the outage, there were 1000 people on site, including representatives of contractors from Germany, France, Sweden and the USA. This was the fifth outage for Sizewell B, which started operating in 1995. Its previous outage, in 2000, took 46 days, the quickest until now.

Sizewell B was designed with extra back-up safety systems to meet UK regulatory requirements. This has tended to make outages more complicated.