Decommissioned

When we were children, our homes were heated by coal fires. There were regular deliveries of coal in sacks to fill up the coal bunkers behind the house. J, who lived in a coal mining area, remembers fondly how comforting the sound of the coal wagons was at night.

All that has gone. And the big power stations fuelled by coal have been or are being decommissioned. Burning all that carbon has been a major cause of the climate crisis we are now facing.

This is Fiddlers Ferry Power station, which closed at the end of March 2020. It’s a big local landmark, sited near the River Mersey between Warrington and Widnes. It was fed by coal from South Yorkshire, and then when the pits there closed following the miners strike, by imports. 16000 tons of coal were burned a day.

Demolition will commence soon. Not a straightforward process, these are huge structures, Eight 134 metre high cooling towers and a 200 metre high chimney. It may take some time.

A really grey sky, we’ve had a lot of rain today.