OLDBURY Power Station may have shut down but new director Mike Heaton still has enough work to last him a lifetime—literally.

With the defuelling phase due to start in July, the decommissioning stage with care and maintenance planned for 2027 and final closure expected between 2097 and 2103, Mr Heaton has a lot on his plate.

The father-of-two, originally from Bolton started working in Oldbury 12 years ago as head of health, physics and chemistry. He moved across departments over his career at the plant and was promoted to the top spot, replacing Phil Sprague, last month.

He told the Gazette he was delighted to take on the new challenge and determined to ensure that the nuclear power station remained safe.

"There is an awful lot of work still going on," he said. "The work we have got coming now is going to be more varied," he said. "Staff will need to be more flexible and be prepared to adapt."

The power station’s second reactor shut down on February 29 and since then vital work has been completed. Hazardous gases such as carbon dioxide, used to cool the reactors, as well as turbine oil have been removed.

The next step will be send off flasks filled with spent fuel to a plant in Sellafield to be reprocessed.

Mr Heaton, whose two daughters attend the Castle School in Thornbury, said that staff numbers would gradually decrease, starting in July, when a handful of employees, all retiring, would be leaving.

By the end of the year, the workforce should go from 415 to around 370.

"When we finish defuelling at the start of 2015, we are looking at the 200 mark," he said. "The folks leaving this year had a good career in Oldbury and decided to go. They are all retiring of taking early retirement."

This will be a very sad time for many who had not only worked most of their lives at the station but built strong friendships at Oldbury.

"We see the station as a family," he said. "We’ve got quite a few people that the power station has brought together. Different generations of families have worked here. We have a father and son, a husband and wife team, twins." Regarding concerns about the future of the local nuclear workforce following the sudden withdrawal of Horizon from plans to build a new power staion in Shepperdine, he said: "The new power station was always going to be too late for them. It would have been a case for people to go somewhere else and then come back."