Electricity has been generated at Littlebrook since 1939 when the first Littlebrook Power Station was commissioned by the Kent Electric Power Company. Littlebrook ‘D’, which commenced generating electricity in 1981, is the fourth power station to be built on the site and was oil fired. Fuel was delivered by seagoing tankers, offloaded at the river jetty and stored in tanks. Fuel from those tanks, as well as supplying Littlebrook ‘D’, was also transferred by river and road to other power stations in the South East.

Littlebrook ‘D’ Power Station was built by the Central Electricity Generating Board from 1977 onwards with the first unit commissioned in 1981. The station was designed as a fuel oil fired station from the beginning – the diversification of fuel supplies being adopted by the CEGB in the 1970s.

The ‘D’ station incorporated the latest 660 MW, 4-cylinder re-heat turbines running at 3000rev/min with each turbine output therefore being larger than the combined output of the previous A, B and C stations! The turbine output was increased to 685 MW during commissioning with practically no additional engineering works required which is testament to the robust design standards rigorously upheld by the CEGB.

The turbines were designed to be flexible in operation with fast responses to changes in required output. There are also 3 gas turbine units manufactured by GEC capable of 35 MW each which are capable of starting up the station should there be a complete collapse of the grid system.

Buildings and Plant Detail

Littlebrook Image Gallery

Visit the plant detail pages above to view more images from each area of the power plant

Littlebrook comprised three 660MW turbo-generator sets manufactured by GEC. The turbines are four cylinder reheat machines running at 3,000 rev/min. Each turbine has a single-flow high pressure (HP) cylinder, a double-flow intermediate pressure (IP) cylinder and two double-flow low pressure (LP) cylinders. Unit 3 had been dismantled quite some time before the closure of the station.

The turbine output was increased to 685 MW during commissioning with practically no additional engineering works required which is testament to the robust design standards rigorously upheld by the CEGB.

Littlebrook B Generating Units

List of power generating units at Littlebrook D Power Station:

Turbine Hall Pictures

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The boiler plant consists of three oil fired boilers which have an evaporation rate of 575.9kg/s at continuous maximum rating with thermal conditions of 541°C and 165.5 bar at the superheater outlet. The boilers have a single furnace, are front wall fired and are designed to operate either continuously or on a two shift basis.

Each boiler has four stages of superheat and two stages of reheat, employing roof tubes and pendant banks of tubes in the horizontal pass. The heat recovery system incorporates a plain tube economiser and twin rotary gas airheaters.

The boilers were manufactured by NEI Nuclear Systems Ltd.

Boiler House Pictures

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The control room at Littlebrook D had been refitted with computerised systems. The three unit control desks were arranged around a central workstation for controlling plant facilities and the gas turbines. A 400kV board and station services board were positioned along the rear wall of the control room.

Control Room Photos

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The admin and workshop buildings at Littlebrook D continued the aesthetic appearance found throughout the site, both inside and out. Internally, the 80s styled corridor walls and doors feature round windows and the “Littlebrook red” that can be seen elsewhere within the site is used to highlight features.

A staff canteen, conference room, separate employee and contractor locker rooms and medical facilities can be found in the admin block, along with the offices upstairs and electrical laboratories. The control room is located on the top floor of the admin block.

The workshops are located in an interconnected building and provided facilities for repair and fabrication work on-site.

Admin Photos

Workshop Photos

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The Littlebrook ‘A’ and ‘B’ stations had been used by Nuclear Electric, later to become BNFL as a training and development centre.

Magnox reactors were designed to be maintenance-free during their operational lifetime, however development of new techniques for working on them needed to take place before attempting new procedures on live reactors. This is where FRED came in – the Facility for Reactor Engineering and Development, where reactor inspection and repair rehearsal rigs were constructed. This is a mock-up of the reactors at Bradwell nuclear power station, used during the development of robotic equipment.

A range of mock-up nuclear reactors had been built, the ‘A’ station containing mock-ups of the reactors at Sizewell, Bradwell and Dungeness ‘A’ power stations.

FRED Pictures

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