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Report - - Willington Power Station Cooling Towers - Derbyshire - August 2020 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Willington Power Station Cooling Towers - Derbyshire - August 2020

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Rachyt

Beauty isn’t always perfection
28DL Full Member
Couldn’t resist checking these out while in Nottingham for the weekend, I’ve always been fascinated by these giants and there’s no way I could have driven past and not had a mooch.

arrived there around half an hour before sunset while going back to the hotel, perfect timing as I managed to get some beautiful shots, won't post too many as they are all pretty similar lol.

Here is a bit of obligatory history that I’m sure you will scroll past as it’s already so well known.

Willington 'A' Power station was opened by the Duke of Devonshire on the 17th December 1957, the initial groundwork having been laid out three years earlier. The 400 MW coal-fired power station had four 104 MW Generating Units equipped with International Combustion boilers and English Electric turbo-alternator sets. On full load, the station would burn approximately 4,000 tons of coal each day. Coal was delivered by rail from the East Midlands Coal Field using private sidings off the nearby main line.

In 1962, the 'A' station was joined by a second 400 MW 'B' station employing two 200 MW generating units equipped with Babcock & Wilcox boilers and Associated Electrical Industries turbo-alternator sets.

When running at full capacity the two power stations could generate about 125 MW of electricity, which was fed into the 132,000 vold grid system. However, as one of the Central Electricity Generating Board's 'two-shifting' stations, Willington did not generally produce electricity 24 hours a day. The generating units were taken off load in the early hours of each morning and put back on again six or seven hours later, in accordance with the country's fluctuating demand for power.

In the late 1980s the electricity industry was privatised by the Thatcher Government, and in 1989 the Willington site was handed over to a private company, National Power. By this time, the tide was turning against coal. Government policy was encouraging the construction smaller gas-fired plants, and cleaner biofuels and renewables. Willington was considered dirty, outdated and expensive. At full load, the station burned through 52,000 tons of coal and produced 9,000 tons of ash per week which had to be carried away by road and pipeline and disposed of. Some of this was used in civil engineering projects and for cinder blocks, but most was landfilled in local disused quarries. It was rumoured at the time that National Power were trying to run Willington into the ground. Through the 1990s, first one set of turbines shut down, then another, the last were run down on 31st March 1999. Demolition of the plant followed swiftly with only the adjacent large substation and the five hyperboloid cooling towers being spared.

There they stand to this day, five brothers, 300 feet high, 145’ diameter at their brim, 122’ around the neck and 218’ at the base. Each tower had an effective cooling surface of 858,000 square feet, together handling up to 6.9 million gallons every hour.

After closure, the site was initially proposed for a large residential development, but the application was rejected and in 2011 permission was granted for a new gas-fired power station to be built on the site, costing £1bn. Since then very little seems to have happened. There was talk of demolishing the towers in 2017 and even a date set, but that date came and went and they stand on, 20 years after the last shift ended.

Photos taken with an iPhone 11 Pro Max

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Rachyt

Beauty isn’t always perfection
28DL Full Member
It’s an incredible place to watch the sun set. You got some lovely shots there!

It was perfect timing! So beautiful and peaceful, Thank you, I took over 60 photos lol so glad I got to visit!
 

Rachyt

Beauty isn’t always perfection
28DL Full Member
There will always be something cool about these towers! Nicely done.
Thank you, there is definitely something about them, the size of them, how peaceful it was there, could happily of camped up for the night
 

Calamity Jane

i see beauty in the unloved, places & things
Regular User
The sunset really makes for perfect shots. Love these anyway, but youve done an excellent job from every angle :cool:
 

flasher

Mind the feeeence......!
28DL Full Member
We were there yesterday afternoon, on possibly the hottest explore I've ever done!
I loved standing inside, marvelling at the size and listening to the mad echoes.
 

Rachyt

Beauty isn’t always perfection
28DL Full Member
We were there yesterday afternoon, on possibly the hottest explore I've ever done!
I loved standing inside, marvelling at the size and listening to the mad echoes.
Ah no way we were there Friday evening, was absolutely roasting we got stuck in traffic for nearly two hours on the way up due to an accident that closed the M1 down.
the echoes inside there were insane,the sheer size of them too is crazy, loved them!
 

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