Chimney a blast for Brown and Mason

At 236 m (778 ft), the third highest chimney in the UK and the tallest in Scotland is set for explosive demolition at 10 pm on Sunday July 28, 2012. The chimney, at Scottish Power’s Inverkip Power Station just 50 m (164 ft) away from the River Clyde, will be brought down by contractor Brown and Mason, who has been on site since February 2012 to carry out the removal of the station.

The chimney, which is made up of 1.4 million bricks and 20,000 tonnes of concrete, consists of five flues with 22 internal floors. Charges will be set on the 10th and ground floors, with the 10th floor charges set to go off fractionally ahead of those on the lower floor to ensure that the chimney falls within the site away from the Clyde.

In a statement, Scottish Power’s project manager Dylan Hughes said “The demolition plan for the chimney stack at Inverkip has been taken following months of discussions with experts including vibration specialists, explosives engineers and ecologists. We have also been working with the police and Inverclyde Council and the relevant railway authorities to ensure that the event will be managed safely.”

The oil fuelled power station was built in the early 1970s but never operated commercially because of the high price of fuel apart from during 1984-85 when there was a shortage of coal as a result of a miner’s strike. It was retained as a strategic reserve until the end of the 1990s when it was mothballed.