Dawn, late May
Of all the UK power stations, Aberthaw was the one @slayaaaa and I both wanted to see the most. By merit of its peculiar design features, Welsh setting and unknown quantity, when a mid-December closure was rumoured on the CEGB workers’ Facebook group earlier than as planned in March, it became top priority. As did it for @Terminal Decline , who succinctly got in touch about a closure week attempt. There was no way out of it not going ahead from then on.
Subject Matter
Aberthaw B was a 1.5MW station built in the late 60s and opened in 1971, on a former golf course site near Cardiff airport on the Vale of Glamorgan’s coast where the cutting edge Aberthaw A had already been puffing away since 1960. As mentioned, its design stands out from its contemporaries in many ways. Aberthaw B has three very cumbersome AEI (we think?) units and Swiss-made Foster Wheeler boilers, and burned predominantly local Welsh coal from the nearby Valleys, more often than not Tower Colliery, until a few years ago. I myself remember seeing the trains come down through the Cardiff-Merthyr Tydfill line that ran through right next to where I went to university, loaded with coal on their way down to Aberthaw, on several occasions.
However due to Welsh coals high sulphur and carbon content, the station was regarded as a heavy polluter even compared to its Yorkshire, Kentish, Midland and Scottish ilk, attracting quite some attention from local activist groups. In RWE’s typical fashion, their response to this was to simply wait out the protests until the station became economically unviable, putting an electric fence around the powerhouse itself in the mean time. Quite why it took so long to reach economic unviability I’m not quite sure, as it has rarely been on at all in the last decade compared to the others – couple that with a sulfurization plant upgrade, sporadic biomass imports and a bloody EU commission court case against it that ended up in the Welsh Assembly.
Literature on its design and architecture is unfortunately very scarce online, so I’m busking a bit here with my thoughts on it. From the outside, it looks very sleek – with its tripartite sweeping hoods on the roof, dark blue upright rectangular windows and white paint job – better a design that most other stations at blending in with its habitat on a very rocky and bleak shoreline but I cannot for a moment imagine that was intended. Other quite unique features for a station of its era are its relatively short and fat chimney, and cooling water outlet/intake node in the form of a tiny artificial dome island a couple of hundred yards out to sea (what an urbex trophy that would be!). Its control room was a bit whacky back in the day too – in its own circular skylit annex akin to Longannet’s – but has unfortunately since been modernised.
Zone
Mothership
The evening began at about 8pm with a muddy walk down to a coastal nature reserve with the intent to get up on the ash disposal mound to the east with a pair of binoculars in hand to get a thorough briefing on everything that was going on. And it wasn’t a great start: reaching the coastal path, a piercing line of light pollution could be seen hovering above the silhouette of the ash mound. A few RWE no unauthorised access signs walked passed and a waist high farmers’ fence stepped over, we began to ascend the deceptively steep mound from the south. When the tallest coal yard floodlight came above the horizon before us, I for one was nearly blinded.
Three more emerged side by side like a scene from Close Encounters, at a luminosity I don’t think I’ve really experienced before. It was hard to think. Cold and hungry and not feeling on good form, I started getting the jitters about the endless Land Rover tracks all over the plateau atop the mound, so sticking to the shadowed sloping side on the east we made our way north to try and get a view of the site that didn’t blast our retinas to pieces. We found a suitable bushy spot with a vantage point and lay down, getting the binoculars out. A few lorries coming and going, a bit of noise from the coal yard, but besides the omnipresent lighting issue that seemed to be imminently foreboding at this point, no serious obstacles we could see from there.
Extent of floodlights - Terminal Decline phone shot
Unsatisfied with this level of research we then headed back to the south side of the site, where Slaya and I had experienced a convincing air of inactivity during a low effort preliminary recce back in the dawn light in May after a night nibbling at Port Talbot (first pic). The sea wall beside the back end of the site though did not provide any good visibility of potential cameras or sensors through the binoculars, again because of this extreme floodlighting. All stood there feeling a bit dejected and irritated, suddenly, at the click of a finger, the coal yard’s second, third, fourth and fifth suns blacked out at 8.55pm on the dot. We all reacted the same way at the same time ('YoOoOoO!'), and I rallied to hit the pub for a couple of hours to plot our movements for the real deal.
From what we’d concluded in our voyeurism, Aberthaw has a security arrangement fairly similar to Longannet, i.e.: an electric fence around the power house and switch house themselves.
Leftover coal heap for sale - Terminal Decline phone shot
The 'long slog' gets underway
Boiler house emergence - from my iPhone
Approach and landing - iPhone
Littered with process cameras and level changes, we picked up the pace and after some mileage made it to the boiler house. The turbine hall, which really excelled above and beyond my expectation, did lack that kind of continuous gantry along the boiler house threshold that you get in most power stations, instead it was more like Tilbury B, with a single footpath in a sort of no man’s land between them. As such you need to go right down to turbine hall level in the boiler house, cross the turbine hall floor partially, and then go up some stairs to get to gantry level. However, it could boast a gantry level walkway on the opposite side of the hall – a rare treat – and we decided it would be a safer bet to spend most of our time on that one in case somebody waltzed out of the control room.
Checkpoint reached
Wharton Crane POV
Units 8 and 9 from the back
Slayaaa in silhouette forming an opinion on the exhibit
Alternator POV, control room lobby on the right steered clear of
It was fairly quiet in there for about 45 minutes, when something odd occurred: a sudden very loud crackling noise over the tannoy for about one second, followed by another about 10 seconds later. The kind of sound when lightning shreds a tree apart. We assumed it was somebody fumbling it in the control room and got quite spooked, so decided to call it a wrap in the turbine hall. Usually I'm the one pestering to leave after less than an hour, but S and TD were also keen to make tracks at this point.
Botched, blurry and out of focus boiler house threshold shot
Return leg begins via the immaculately mopped floor (contrary to the state of the west gantry run which was thoroughly decrepit)
The exit, to my delight, was a smoother affair than the entrance and we did the exact reverse route but better rehearsed and with the added bonus of a trodden down path through the brambles (if this route becomes the preferred one, don't forget to pay homage to our sacrifice in clearing that path, it was horrendous).
Out of the woods - Terminal Decline phone shot
In all, Aberthaw lived up to everything I hoped for. Its terrain was engaging, its turbine hall so much better proportioned and majestic than I expected. Contrary to the shitshow that has unfolded at Cottam in the last few months - with fairly meagre physical defences but relentless, emphatic personnel patrols that will chase down anything that crosses a camera or sensor for a split second with searchlights and multiple vans.
Merry Christmas all.
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