Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station owned and operated by Uniper at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, England. Commissioned in 1968 by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), the station had a capacity of 2,000 MW. It was the last remaining operational coal-fired power station in the UK, and closed on 30 September 2024, marking the end of coal-powered electricity generation in the United Kingdom. The power station occupies a prominent position next to the A453 road, close to junction 24 of the M1 motorway, the River Trent and the Midland Main Line (adjacent to East Midlands Parkway railway station) and dominates the skyline for many miles around with its eight cooling towers and 199 m (653 ft) tall chimney.
Turbine Located in the plant is a decommissioned turbine which is noticeable by a brown chimney.
History
The public inquiry for the station's construction took place at County Hall, Nottinghamshire from 8 January 1963. It was approved by the government on 29 August 1963.
Construction The construction of the power station began in 1963 and it was completed in 1967. The station began generating power on 31 January 1968. The architects were Godfrey Rossant and J. W. Gebarowicz of Building Design Partnership. White cladding was used on the boiler and turbine houses and the end elevations had vertical bands of glazing to emphasise their verticality, the four concrete coal bunkers projected above the roof-line. The structural engineer was C. S. Allott.
Design and specification The station had four units, each consisting of a coal-fired boiler made by Babcock & Wilcox driving a 500 megawatt (MW) Parsons generator set. The four boilers are rated at 435 kg/s, steam conditions were 158.58 bar at 566 °C, with reheat to 566 °C. This gave the station a total generating capacity of 2.116 GW, equivalent to the electricity demand of approximately 2 million people. There are 4 × 17.5 MW auxiliary gas turbines on the site; these were commissioned in December 1966. Ratcliffe power station was supplied with coal and other bulk commodities by rail via a branch off the adjacent Midland Main Line (MML). Rail facilities include a north facing junction off the MML slow lines, two tracks of weighbridges, coal discharge hoppers, and a flue gas desulfurisation discharge and loading hopper. There was formerly a fly ash bunker and loading point with a south-facing connection to the MML; this was extant in 1990 but had been demolished and disconnected by 2005.
Electricity production In 1981, the station was burning 5.5 million tonnes of coal a year, consuming 65% of the output of south Nottinghamshire's coal-mines. The last of Nottinghamshire's collieries, Thoresby Colliery, has since closed in 2015. Emissions of sulphur dioxide, which cause acid rain, were greatly reduced in 1993 when a flue gas desulphurisation system using a wet limestone-gypsum process became operational on all of the station's boilers. Emissions of oxides of nitrogen, greenhouse gases which also cause damage to the ozone layer, were reduced in 2004 when new equipment was fitted to Unit 1 by Alstom.
In 1975/76 and again in 1986/87 Ratcliffe was presented with the Hinton Cup, the CEGB's "good house keeping trophy". The award was commissioned by Sir Christopher Hinton, the first chairman of the CEGB. On 11 February 2009, Unit 1 became the first UK 500 MW coal-fired unit to run for 250,000 hours. On 2 April 2009, E.ON UK announced it had installed a 68-panel solar photovoltaic array at the power station "to help heat and light the admin block, saving an estimated 6.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year". Uniper has its Technology Centre at the site, where it carries out research and development on power generation.
Environmental performance In 2009, the plant emitted 8–10 million tonnes of CO2 annually, making it the 18th-highest CO2-emitting power station in Europe. Ratcliffe power station was compliant with the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD), an EU directive that aims to reduce acidification, ground level ozone and particulate matter by controlling the emissions of sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and particles from large combustion plants. To reduce emissions of sulphur the plant was fitted with flue gas desulphurisation, and also with a Boosted Over Fire Air system to reduce the concentration of oxides of nitrogen in the flue gas. Ratcliffe power station was the first in the United Kingdom to be fitted with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology, which reduces the emissions of nitrogen oxides through the injection of ammonia directly into the flue gas and passing it over a catalyst.
Environmental protests
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