About Our Park
GSTP is a lively, engaging and sustainable business community
focused around skills, technlogy and research.
The power station.
The construction of the power station, which was undertaken by a consortium of AEI and John Thompson, began in 1956. It had two Magnox reactors producing 276 megawatts (MW) in total – enough electricity on a typical day to serve an urban area the size of Bristol. The reactors were supplied by The Nuclear Power Group (TNPG) and the turbines by AEI. Electricity generation started in 1962 and ran for 27 years to 1989.
Reactor 2 was shut down in October 1988, followed by Reactor 1 in March 1989. Berkeley was the first commercial nuclear power station in the United Kingdom to be decommissioned. So far the nuclear decommissioning process has involved the removal of all fuel from the site in 1992, and the demolition of structures such as the turbine hall in 1995 and cooling ponds in 2001. The next step of decommissioning will be the care and maintenance stage of the nuclear reactor structures, scheduled to commence in 2026, until radioactive decay means that they can be demolished and the site completely cleared between 2070 and 2080.
Berkeley was one of four nuclear power stations located close to the mouth of the River Severn and the Bristol Channel, the others being Oldbury, Hinkley Point A and Hinkley Point B.
Just south of the power station were Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories, one of the UK’s three main nuclear power industry research centres. At its peak about 750 staff worked at the labs including 200 scientists and engineers. It's here that the Gloustershire Science and Technology Park began. During the sites £30m transformation into GSTP, we worked with over 500 former Berkeley laboratory staff, who delve into the site's history during the development.
The nuclear laboratories.
Now and the future.
The new science park is made up of Circa 200,000ft² of previously existing offices, laboratories, workshops and education buildings. Activities at the park include education(secondary, further and higher), cyber security, bio fuels, kinetic energy, dosimetry, automotive, jet propulsion and building technologies.
A unique campus for science and technology with education and training at is heart.
Owned by SGS Group which includes South Gloucestershire and Stroud College The college operates from campuses across the Gloucestershire and Bristol areas.
At GSTP SGS College and UTC have hundreds of learners specialising in Engineering, Construction and Digital technologies.
