This coming Sunday morning (15th Dec) will see the UK’s second highest chimney demolished – right next to the Dartford Crossing.
It’s the remaining 215 metre high chimney from the Littlebrook Power Station which itself is being demolished at the moment. The oil fueled plant is being demolished mainly as it no longer complies with regulations covering air pollution levels, and the cost of making it compliant wasn’t economical.
The power plant was notable for being one of the few that could restart generating electricity without an external power to restart its generators in case of a wide-scale power-outage. This was partly due to cold-war concerns that an attack could take out London power supplies.
To be able to restart the plant, it made use of versions of jet engines based on those used on Concorde to jump start the main generators — and they were used to keep the lights on following the October 1987 storms.
The main power station was demolished in August, but on Sunday morning the final tall chimney will also be taken down.
There’s an air traffic warning to avoid the area between 7am to 9am, although the demolition, by Brown and Mason is timetabled for 8am.
There will be a local road exclusion around the power station, and traffic across the Dartford Crossing will be stopped for a short while — which itself will be a useful indicator to people watching that the explosion is imminent.