Letter to the Torness Local Liaison Committee - 22 July

22 July 2020

Dear LLC Member,

As a member of our community, I believe it is important to keep you updated on any developments at Torness power station.

I wanted to let you know that our regulator, the ONR, has granted permission for the statutory outage on one of our reactors to be postponed until January 2021.

As discussed at our annual local liaison committee meeting held in June 2020, we were due to take one of the two reactors at the power station off line on Friday 24 July for around 11 weeks for an extensive maintenance period, which is known as a “statutory outage”. We take each reactor offline for one of these outages every three years.

We know that statutory outages bring a boost to the East Lothian economy with contractors using accommodation, restaurants and other businesses in the area but this outage would have brought more than 700 extra workers to the site at a time when communities are still concerned about the spread of Covid-19 .Consideration was given to reducing the scope of the outage to limit the additional people on site but we concluded that postponement, with the support of the regulator, was the most appropriate option.

We submitted a detailed case to the ONR for deferral which was assessed for safety and formally accepted allowing a new date for the outage to be set.

Torness power station’s two nuclear reactors generate enough electricity to power more than two million homes and started operating in 1988. The station employs more than 500 full time staff and around 200 full time contract partners.

If you wish to ask any questions please feel free to ring the station on 01368 873000 and ask for our Community Liaison Officer, Ashleigh Dickson.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Gunn

Station Director