Nottinghamshire

West Burton power station hard at work in 2009. Cottam power station cooling towers are just visible lower left.

Harworth Colliery closed in 2006 and was kept on care and maintenance for a few years by owners UK Coal. The two shafts which were sunk in the 1920s were 900 and 1000m deep. There are estimated to be around 40 million tonnes of reserves in the Deep Soft and Top Hard seams but all is now demolished and these reserves will never be accessed.

Somewhere in the boiler house of Britain's last remaining operational coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe on Soar. I have no idea what they are all for.

At West Burton there were two power stations on the River Trent near Gainsborough. One is a coal-fired power station, which was commissioned in 1968, and the second is a combined cycle gas turbine power station, commissioned in 2011. Both stations were owned and operated by EDF Energy. This is the coal fired station which generated 2,000 MW and was the first station of this capacity in Britain. It was closed during 2023.

At the time only months from closure, the 2,000 Mw EDF owned coal-fired station at Cottam was hard at work when I last visited. Opened in 1969 it is now gutted and slowly being demolished.