Monday 8 July 2024
An Industry Visit to Hinkley Point C ('HPC'), which is being constructed by EDF Energy took place on Monday 8 July 2024. Visits are rarely allowed as they can be disruptive to the construction schedule, so this is one not to be missed. The visit included a presentation with Q&As as well as a tour of the site.
Paul Mott, who organised the visit, provided the following write up of the visit
A good sized party of 25 fuellers visited Europe’s largest construction site at EDF’s Hinkley Point C (HPC) twin nuclear power station on 8th July. We enjoyed staying the night before at EDF’s history-rich 800 year old Cannington Court, the site for all the CEGB’s first planning enquiry hearings for Hinkley C in 1988.
Stacy from the guide service gave us an inspiring and enthusiastic talk; we learnt that HPC will be able to supply the energy consumed by 6 million homes, entailing £18b of UK spend, £5b of which will have been spent in the South West of England. Work on the second reactor is on average being completed 30% quicker than that on the first, giving confidence that if an identical “EPR” PWR power station is later built at Sizewell, there will be a lot of efficiencies. 3 million tonnes of concrete will have been used; the power station has 7,000 rooms.
On our tour of the site with guides Sacha and Debbie, the answer to the question “where did all the cranes go?” was immediately evident; the collection included “Big Carl”, the world’s largest land crane, running on its own private rail tracks on the site. The scale of everything was massive, with safety and minimising any adverse impacts on the local community both top priorities. Other EPR projects started earlier at Flamanville, France, Olkiluoto, Finland, and two more at Quinshan, China.
Taking lunch afterwards locally, the party thanked Paul for his organisation, which had left nothing to chance, and several of the party said that what with our stay and the dinner the night before, it had been in parts like a fuellers’ holiday !”.
