History
With the economic success of another advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) nuclear power station at Dungeness, the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) proposed their third AGR station in 1967 to be situated on the edge of the Durham coalfield, near the seaside resort of Seaton Carew. The proposal came at a time when the CEGB's move toward alternative fuels to coal, threatened the coal industry's existence. Despite this, and a short ministerial delay, the plans for the Seaton Carew station (which became known as Hartlepool nuclear power station) went ahead. Because the construction of the station was given the go ahead, the National Coal Board were not able to get the CEGB behind the plans for a prototype fluidised bed combustion (FBC) coal station at Grimethorpe in Yorkshire. Because of this, the UK missed out on pioneering FBC technology, before it became internationally recognised as the best way of burning coal.
Sited 1.65 mi (2.66 km) from Seaton Carew, and in the middle of the industrial complex of Teesside, the station was to be built closer to any major urban area than any nuclear power station site had been. To make this acceptable, the station's reactors were to be housed in prestressed concrete pressure vessels.
The construction of the power station which was undertaken by Nuclear Design & Construction ('NDC'), a consortium backed by English Electric, Babcock International Group and Taylor Woodrow Construction, began in 1969. The construction was delayed in 1970, when the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate declared that they were unhappy with part of the station's boiler design, setting the CEGB back £25 million. The station's reactors were supplied by the National Nuclear Corporation, and the station's generating sets by the General Electric Company. Some fourteen years into construction, the first of the station's two units were commissioned in 1983, the other in 1985. The station first generated electricity commercially on 1 August 1983.
Read more about this topic: Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station
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