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Report - - Thorpe Marsh Power Station, Doncaster Aug 10 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Thorpe Marsh Power Station, Doncaster Aug 10

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54Strat

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
A bit of history (thanks wiki) some explanations.

Construction started in 1959, the 1 Gigawatt power station was commissioned between 1963 and 1965. It was built as a prototype for all the large modern power stations in the UK. Despite in the early 90's, £40 million was invested in new equipment, the plant closed in 1994 with the loss of 232 jobs (120 redundancies were made earlier in an attempt to keep the plant open), and the 45 acre site was aquired by Able UK for developement. Six cooling towers remain, together with two ash slurry buildings and railway coal drops. The structures still stand now because it is feared that any explosion would cause the banks of the nearby canal to rupture.

The cooling towers at Thorpe Marsh are classed as Wet, Natural-draft Cooling Towers and rely on the evapourative cooling principle to cool the water.

Hot water from the plant needs to be cooled and recycled, so it's goes in about a third of the way up and is distributed and allowed to drip down through the fill (to create splashes) and is collected in the basin at the base of the tower. Natural-draft cooling towers use the buoyancy of the exhaust air rising in a tall chimney to provide the draft to cool the water. The hyperboliod shaped towers have become the design standard for all natural-draft cooling towers because of their structural strength and minimum usage of material. The hyperboloid shape also aids in accelerating the upward convective air flow, improving cooling efficiency.

Lesson over.

Headed out to here after seeing a few fantastic recent reports, and I wasn't disappointed. Another solo explore, this place really does take you by surprise. The wind was gale force and actually blew me over once. The plastic debris, dumped venetian blinds amongst other things, was whipped up by the wind into a crazy vortex in the base of the towers. I even sighted the top rims of one of the towers with one of the huts on the ground, and I swear the fooker was wobbling like jelly. Add that to the fact the demo crews have previously knocked a few supports out here and then add the vertigo looking up, it all leads to a very unsafe feeling. I loved it :) I met a couple of photographers, but we could only sign language at each other as the wind noise was horrendous. Lots of thumbs up's and grins.

And something to think about if you're in the area, it's windy and fancy a look...
At Ferrybridge power station on 1 November 1965, the station was the site of a major structural failure, when three of the cooling towers collapsed due to vibrations in 85mph winds. Although the structures had been built to withstand higher wind speeds, the shape of the cooling towers meant that westerly winds were funnelled into the towers themselves, creating a vortex. Three out of the original eight cooling towers were destroyed and the remaining five were severely damaged.
This one was built after Thorpe Marsh ;)

Anyways, the pics. A few cliches, but how can you not? ;)


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Thanks for looking.
 
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