The West Burton power stations are a pair of power stations on the River Trent, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England. West Burton A was a coal-fired power station, one of the Hinton Heavies which was commissioned in 1966 and operated until 2023. West Burton B on the other hand, is a combined cycle gas turbine power station, commissioned in 2013. West Burton A is owned by EDF Energy, while West Burton B is owned and operated by TotalEnergies.
The station has been accredited as an Investor in People since 1995, and certified to ISO 14001 for its environmental management system since 1996; the power station won a RoSPA President's Award in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The site is the farthest north of what was a series of power stations in the Trent valley, being downstream of the now-closed Cottam power stations. As of September 2022, it was one of only three coal-fired power stations left in the UK and was required to close before 2024, with generation on two units initially planned to cease on 30 September 2022.
Due to the volatile energy market associated with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United Kingdom Government agreed with plant owners EDF Energy that the remaining two generating units would be available for use for 6 months beyond the 30 September 2022 closure date, in order to provide supplies over the winter period. The plant ended generation on 31 March 2023.
The site of West Burton A is the planned location for the first nuclear fusion power plant to be built under the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme.
West Burton A history Construction The station is built on the site of the deserted medieval village of West Burton. Construction began in 1961 by the Northern Project Group a department within the CEGB the construction was overseen by resident engineer Douglas Derbyshire who had recently completed the build of the nearby High Marnham Power Station. In a bid to combine efforts at the design and construction stages the Boiler and Turbo-generator plant were replicated at Fiddlers Ferry power station located in Cuerdley, Cheshire, in North West England. The consulting engineers for the project were Merz & McLellan and the main contractor on site was Alfred McAlpine with steelwork designed by the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company.
The station was the first 2,000 MW power station to be constructed in the United Kingdom and was visited by the then chairman of the CEGB Christopher Hinton on 27 November 1964 the instigator of the new 500 MW units. It subsequently attracted visitors from around the world including Mohammad Reza Pahlavi the Shah of Iran who was escorted around the site by Robert Laycock the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire on 6 March 1965.
West Burton number one unit, commissioned in September 1966, was the second 500 MW generating unit to be ordered and go into full commercial operation. A further three units were commissioned at the site in 1967. The station was officially opened on 25 April 1969 by the Minister of Power Roy Mason, Sir Stanley Brown the then Chairman of the CEGB, Arthur Hawkins Director of the Midlands Region and Douglas Pask director of the Northern Project Group. It was a lavish ceremony with a large marquee and band present.
Architecture The principal architects for the buildings were Rex Savidge and John Gelsthorpe of Architects' Design Group (ADG) from Baker Street, Nottingham. Heliodon modelling was used to determine the visual and psychological impact of the structures to be used on site due to their scale. This created a Zone of Visual Influence (ZVI) a system pioneered by the CEGB for the creation of future 2,000 MW power stations in the 1960s. The tower layouts exploit line and lozenge formations. The opposite pairs of the lozenge group were coloured light and dark to avoid tendency of shapes to coalesce when viewed at a moderate distance. The offset tower of the line group has a light yellow colour with intense hue which acts as a nodal point. This was decided via a technical committee, the architects and William Holford in 1962. However, 10 years after construction the towers were indistinguishable from one another as the yellow tint was much faded. The main building colours are limited to black, white and yellow. The ancillary buildings are grouped around two courts through which the approach road passes. The Executive partner for (ADG) was Rex Savidge and Architect in charge was John Gelsthorpe assisted by Norman Simpson. West Burton was granted an award by the Civic Trust for its "outstanding contribution to the surrounding scene". The Civic Trust, announcing the 82 awards it made in 1968 from more than 1,400 entries from 94 counties in the United Kingdom described West Burton as "an immense engineering work of great style which, far from detracting from the visual scene, acts as a magnet to the eye from many parts of the Trent Valley".
Ownership The plant was originally operated by the CEGB and then run by National Power after privatisation, until April 1996 when it was bought by the Eastern Group which became TXU Europe. In November 2001 when the price of electricity was low, TXU Europe sold the station to London Electricity Group for £366 million. EDF Energy operated the West Burton power stations from 2001, however on 9 April 2021 the company announced the sale of the 1,332 MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station and 49 MW battery at West Burton B to EIG Global Energy Partners. The sale process was completed on 31 August 2021.
In 1977 a British Rail Class 56 locomotive was officially named in front of the coal plant control block as 'West Burton Power Station' number 56009 later re-numbered to 56201.
Prior to privatisation West Burton was the last CEGB power station to be awarded the Christopher Hinton trophy in recognition of good housekeeping. The station had a Discovery Centre to educate local school children and also has the oldest mound of FGD gypsum in the UK, part of an experiment set up by CEGB scientists in 1988. In the summer of 1998 Station Manager Derrek Wells was awarded the OBE for his services to the power industry.
Environment West Burton was opted in to the UK Transitional National Plan, placing limits on its sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides and particulates emissions to a period up to the end of 2020: part of the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU which superseded the Large Combustion Plant Directive 2001/80/EC. Under the EU regulations West Burton was classed as two power plants due to the fact of having two chimneys.
Unbuilt West Burton 'B' (Coal) In 1988 the then chairman of the CEGB Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring announced a 2 x 900 MW coal-fired power station fitted with flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) to be known as 'West Burton B' would be built on the site. The plan was abandoned just before privatisation.
Closure and future In March 2021, EDF confirmed that West Burton A would cease generation on 30 September 2022. However, in June 2022, EDF agreed to defer closure of two units at West Burton A power station by a further six months with the closure date revised to 31 March 2023. This was in response to the Government request to keep the units available over the winter of 2022–23. The station closed as planned on 31 March 2023. Decommissioning of the station took place throughout the latter months of 2023, and demolition began in January 2024 with a planned end date of 2028. There has been protest to the demolition of the station from campaign group The Twentieth Century Society, arguing significant pieces of Britain's industrial heritage such as West Burton A should be preserved. The Society added the building to its Risk List of architecture at risk of being lost in 2023.
After it was first listed as a candidate in June 2021, on 3 October 2022 the site was announced as the planned location for the first nuclear fusion power plant to be built under the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme.
West Burton B history
A £600 million 1,270 MWe CCGT power station, which runs on natural gas, was built next to the coal-fired station. Construction by the Kier Group started in January 2008. It was built on land originally allocated for a proposed 1,800 MW West Burton 'B' coal power station that was to have been built in the 1980s. Privatisation of the electricity industry in 1990 cancelled this scheme. The power station was commissioned in 2013, and supplies electricity to around 1.5 million homes. A new gas pipeline was built to link to the National Transmission System at Grayingham in Lincolnshire. Around 1,000 people were involved in the construction. The plant consists of three 430 MW gas turbines each with a heat recovery steam generator.
Activists from the No Dash For Gas group protesting against the building of the gas plant pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated trespass in February 2013. EDF discontinued a civil lawsuit against them in March 2013.
West Burton C (planned) West Burton C is a planned 299 MW OCGT peaking plant, to be located on the West Burton site. It was granted planning consent in October 2020. The land and rights to build the station were retained by EDF Energy upon the sale of West Burton B to EIG in 2021. At the time, it was reported EDF Energy had 'no immediate plans' to build the station.
West Burton A specification West Burton A provided electricity for around two million people, and is situated on a site. Coal for the power station, like Cottam, came from the Welbeck colliery at Meden Vale until it closed in May 2010. The station's other main supplier of coal, Thoresby Colliery, closed in 2015. The station connected to the National Grid, like most similar sized coal power stations, via a transformer and substation at 400 kV. The chimneys of West Burton Power Station are tall.
Boiler The four boilers have single divided furnaces and assisted circulation. Each has a maximum continuous rating of and a design efficiency of 90.75%. Built by International Combustion, the design is similar in many respects to that of the now redundant 550 MW ICL boiler at Thorpe Marsh which had two furnaces with centre division walls. There are six stages of superheat and three stages of reheat in each boiler, with superheat and reheat stages mixed in position. As a result of operating experience on boilers of this size at Thorpe Marsh it was found that higher superheat temperatures and larger pressure drops than the design figures occurred in the boiler. New materials had to be employed for the superheat sections and the tube paths redesigned as a result.
The boilers are high and the main suspension girders span . The total downward thermal expansion is about . The superheater output is 569 °C at . The reheater has inlet and outlet temperatures of 364 and 569 °C with an inlet pressure of and steam flow of . The single steam drum weighs 160 tonnes.
The furnace is tangentially fired with eight burner boxes, each with six burners, together with oil burners in each box for lighting up. Steam temperature control is by electrically operated tilting burners and by electro-hydraulically operated spray desuperheaters, giving a control range of 70 to 100% of the maximum continuous rating. There are four desuperheaters for each of the superheater and reheater circuits. The economisers have a heating surface of .
There are two forced and two induced draught Davidson fans per boiler. The f.d. fans are driven by constant speed 1,300 hp motors at 596 rpm and are rated at 11,380 m3/min (402,000 (cu ft)/min).