Oldbury Power Station could help to keep the lights on well into 2012 despite plans for decommissioning to begin in June 2011.

The site manager of Oldbury, Joe Lamonby, confirmed that they were looking at the feasibility of extending their power generation into 2012 to offer best value for money.

The current plan is for both Reactor 1 and 2 to generate power until June 2011. The slow process of decommissioning will then begin on site.

No more fuel will be brought to Oldbury from now onwards and whilst they are ploughing as much into the reactors as possible to get maximum output before decommissioning begins, it is likely there will still be enough fuel left to fuel one reactor past the June 2011 deadline.

Mr Lamonby, who is now the longest serving site manager ever to work at Oldbury, said: "We are doing some early feasibility work to see if we can go beyond 2011.

"We would not have enough fuel to continue running two reactors, but we could take the spare fuel from one and put it into the other to keep it going longer.

"But of course we will have to satisfy our regulators that it is a safe operation."

Oldbury Power Station has over recent months been generating more energy than ever, due to the extra fuel being put in ahead of shut down.

"There is no more Magnox fuel available, there is no more fuel coming to Oldbury from now on," Mr Lamonby told a meeting of the Oldbury Site Stakeholders Group last week.

"As we move towards the end of generation output will drop, but at the moment we are doing fantastically well."

At the same meeting members were told the station had gone 200 days without an accident of any kind and that their safety record had been excellent. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced their expenditure for the next year would be £2.8 billion for their estate of 19 sites.