Dungeness B is an advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) nuclear power station located in Kent, England. First coming online in the mid-1980s and operated by EDF – Europe’s largest nuclear generator – the site was historically responsible for producing electricity for the UK grid. In June 2021, EDF announced the site’s unexpected entry into defueling due to ongoing technical challenges and additional safety requirements.
Significance: As one of the UK’s older AGR stations, transitioning from generation to defueling presented a highly complex set of technical and cultural hurdles.
Regulatory Oversight: The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) closely monitors the defueling process, ensuring that critical safety and leadership standards are maintained throughout this period of organisational change.
What was the challenge?
When the unexpected decision was made to begin defuelling, Dungeness B faced a host of leadership and cultural challenges:
- A major shift in mindset from electricity generation to decommissioning, which triggered uncertainty around roles and responsibilities.
- Impending reductions in headcount, creating uncertainty over job security and impacting staff morale at the station.
- The change and uncertainty associated with the station’s defuelling, which required emerging leaders to shift their focus from building technical capabilities to broader leadership capabilities.
- An ONR review in November 2023 reinforced the need for strong leadership to maintain regulatory compliance and effectively guide the workforce through the defuelling phase.
Despite these challenges, the ultimate goal was to ensure that Dungeness B remained on track to meet defueling deadlines, sustain regulatory compliance, and build a robust leadership foundation for future operations.
How did we help?
Moorhouse partnered with EDF to conduct a culture maturity assessment and training needs analysis, enabling the design of focused interventions to address immediate challenges.
Focused interventions included:
Stakeholder Engagement
- We conducted interviews and workshops with over 45 stakeholders, including the senior leadership team, to build a clear view of day-to-day challenges and longer-term risks.
- Through stakeholder engagement, we developed a clear vision for the newly formed Operational Sharpness Programme, designed to ensure defuelling targets were met safely and on time.
Leadership Interventions
- High-Performing Teams Session: We facilitated a session aimed at rebuilding trust among senior leaders, with emphasis on open communication and collective decision-making.
- Leadership Toolkit Training: We designed and delivered a tailored two-day programme, establishing a foundational set of leadership skills across the plant. This covered emotional intelligence, accountability, and team motivation.
Change Initiatives
- Change Champions Network: We set up a network to foster engagement across departments, reduce resistance to change, and implement a bottom-up approach to driving change initiatives. We supported the identification and onboarding of Champions, as well as developing the guidance materials and initiative structure.
- Reverse Mentoring: We introduced a programme to help leaders gain a deeper insight into how their decisions affect other areas of the plant, while also understanding challenges they wouldn’t normally be exposed to. We designed the initiative’s guidance, onboarding materials, and made proactive improvements based on feedback.
- Effective One-to-One’s: We standardised one-to-one frameworks by introducing new tracking and reporting processes via EDF’s Nuclear Power central HR function, fostering accountability and regular check-ins.
- Comms & Engagement: We developed a communications plan to align the wider station with the transformational journey, leading the creation of communication materials such as programme updates and ‘A Day in the Life of’ features.
What was the impact?
By combining structured leadership interventions with targeted change initiatives, Moorhouse helped Dungeness B improve operational performance, strengthen day-to-day leadership discipline, and build greater confidence in the station’s defueling mission.
Improved operational performance: The station is now consistently delivering against key operational targets, including achieving sub-24-hour defuelling cycle times per channel and regularly out-turning three flasks per week, giving the station a more consistent and reliable rate of delivery through defuelling.
Embedded stronger leadership and performance management: Training delivered to over 40 leaders and coaching support for over 30 leaders helped strengthen day-to-day leadership discipline across the station. More structured one-to-ones improved management consistency and accountability, while broader governance improvements, including daily trending, station performance committees and structured performance reviews showed the capability becoming embedded in how the station was run.
Clearer programme alignment: The vision for the Operational Sharpness Programme helped align activity across the station and avoid duplication with other programmes and initiatives, giving the work a clearer focus and supporting more joined-up delivery.
Improved external confidence: The cultural and leadership improvements helped strengthen confidence in the station’s direction, both internally and externally. Most notably, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) recognised the impact of the work, with feedback described by the Plant Manager as overwhelmingly positive and confirmation that special measures were no longer required.
We continue to see the impact of Moorhouse’s support in the numbers: sub‑24‑hour defuelling cycle times, consistent throughput, and people genuinely joined to the mission. Our people understand their purpose in the defuelling mission and that’s changed everything.
As a result of this work, we have fundamentally changed the way that we operate. Now operators raise issues early, we listen, we track them, and we fix them before they become events.
Operational Sharpness was right as an intervention at the time – but the important thing is that it didn’t stop there and the support we received meant that we didn’t drift back into old habits; we’ve built it into how we run the station day‑to‑day, rather than waiting for the wheels to fall off again.”
Plant Manager, EDF Dungeness B
