Sizewell B power plant outage for 66-day maintenance project

Robert Gunn said he was confident the outage job would be done "properly"

The country's youngest nuclear power station is being switched offline for 66 days of maintenance and refuelling.

Sizewell B in Suffolk says workers will complete more than 10,000 routine tasks for what is its 18th refuelling outage.

The nuclear plant supplies electricity to 2.5 million homes in East Anglia and power will be sourced from other UK stations during the outage.

New preparation work for the planned Sizewell C plant also started this week.

Station director Robert Gunn said: "We've been preparing for [the outage] for several years so we are confident we will get the job done properly so the plant can come back on and provide reliable power to the country,"

BBC Look East was taken inside Sizewell B power station on Tuesday

Sizewell B, which is owned by the French multi-national energy firm EDF, started supplying electricity to the National Grid on 14 February 1995 and managers claim it has produced 243 TWh (terawatt hours) in electricity since then - enough to power every home in Suffolk for 178 years.

The first turbine generator is due to be switched offline on Wednesday and the second turned off on Friday.

The work includes replacing a rotor and servicing valves, pumps and motors.

The coastal site employs 800 people, but an extra 2,000 are joining from elsewhere for the outage work.

The planned Sizewell C plant is expected to cost about £20bn

Marsh harrier nests were found last year on land where Sizewell C is expected to be built

Managers also said work started on Tuesday to chop down trees on Goose Hill, including mature Corsican pine and Scots pine, to make way for an access road for the planned Sizewell C station.

Six hectares of the Sizewell Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) - about 5% of its overall size - is due to be taken up by the new site.

The plant says ecologists are overseeing work to "ensure" wildlife disperses from the area naturally to other habitats that have been created.

Sarah Williamson, civil programme director for Sizewell C, said the new project would create a net gain for wildlife

Sarah Williamson, civil programme director for Sizewell C, said there would be a "net gain" for surrounding wildlife.

"Look at what we're living through now with the energy crisis - we do need these projects and we need to do them in the very sensitive way that we're setting out with Sizewell C," said Ms Williamson.

The Sizewell site is also just to the south of the RSPB Minsmere reserve and Dunwich Heath.

Environmental campaigners have claimed proper investigations into the scale of damage to local woodland have not been carried out and that protection for the nearby coastline is not guaranteed.

Stop Sizewell C campaigner Paul Collins claimed the disruption to habitats would not be offset until the late 2060s at the earliest.

"EDF's claim of a biodiversity net gain for Sizewell C completely ignores the very significant biodiversity loss that would be inflicted during 12 or so years of construction," he said.

The government backed EDF's plans in November and announced £700m in investment.

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