Aureos wins contract worth up to £190m to remove the Dungeness A boilers
Eight boiler units of about 800 tonnes each will be taken out of the closed Kent nuclear station, clearing roughly a third of its above-ground structures.
By Daily Oracles News Team2 min read
The biggest pieces of machinery still standing at Dungeness A, the closed Magnox nuclear station on the Kent coast, are due to be taken apart and removed under a contract announced on Wednesday.
Nuclear Restoration Services, the state-owned body that decommissions 15 former nuclear sites for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has appointed Aureos to carry out the job. The contract is worth up to £190m. It covers eight boiler units, each weighing about 800 tonnes, together with the plant and infrastructure attached to them.
Dungeness A generated electricity from 1965 until the end of 2006. Its two reactors were emptied of fuel by 2012, with the spent fuel sent to Sellafield, according to the Office for Nuclear Regulation. Defuelling removed most of the radiological hazard. What remains is the job of taking down the buildings and plant.
Moving 6,400 tonnes in eight pieces
Aureos will shift the units with a specialist jack and slide system, the method set out in the announcement for handling loads of this size.
That method needed preparation, and the contract follows four years of enabling work at the site to get the boiler complex ready.
Taken together, the eight units weigh around 6,400 tonnes. When the project is complete, about a third of the station's above-ground structures will have gone, shrinking the footprint that has to be inspected and maintained.
Why the cost matters
Decommissioning is paid for from public money through the NDA, so every structure left standing carries a running bill for inspection and upkeep. Nuclear Restoration Services said taking the boilers out would cut those long-term care demands, and that it wanted to use new approaches across its sites to give taxpayers better value.
The firm was chosen through a competitive process that scored bidders on technical capability, certainty of delivery, innovation, social value and cost. Aureos has also committed to work with schools, universities, community groups and local businesses in the area through events, supply chain openings and volunteering.
The announcement did not give a finishing date for the boiler removal, and the £190m figure is a ceiling rather than a fixed price. The site director described the contract as the start of one of the most significant stages in clearing the station.
