Brett Aggregates deliver for power station restoration

Lydd Quarry supplies more than 25,000 tonnes of material to backfill nuclear turbine hall basement

THE team at Brett Aggregates’ Lydd Quarry have successfully delivered more than 25,000 tonnes of material over a six-month period, to backfill an empty basement of a nuclear turbine hall at the decommissioned Dungeness A nuclear power station in Kent.

In its operational days, the turbine hall stood 26m high and housed four turbo-generators that supplied electricity to the national grid for more than 40 years. Since its closure in 2006, the site has been undergoing decommissioning and restoration.

Large-scale restoration projects like this call for careful site planning and co-ordination, as Darren Knight, Brett Aggregates’ operations manager for Kent, explained: ‘To accommodate the restoration works we created a separate loading and storage area, and built a new road through the Lydd site. We also had a team who were dedicated to the Dungeness project, to ensure regular supplies to other customers continued without disruption.’

The Brett Aggregates team also worked closely with the site at Dungeness to plan deliveries, as Robert Hope, transport manager at Brett Aggregates, explained: ‘Working closely with the site team, we planned for 30 loads per day to be delivered as efficiently as possible using our largest articulated trucks. This allowed us to deliver more material each day using fewer vehicles.’

Darren Knight added: ‘Paul Prebble, who supervises our Lydd site, and the team did an excellent job in preparing for and delivering this restoration project. It was a great effort by everyone involved.’

Now completed, the project has restored part of the local landscape while plans are made for the site’s future.