Closure and Demolition
The A station closed in 1984, and the B station closed in 1993 after surpassing its designed life expectancy. The cooling towers were demolished on 20 December 1998, and by this time the four chimneys and main buildings had also been demolished, leaving only the C Station operating.
One of the station's generating sets was taken out of operation in 1995, reducing the stations capacity by 333 MW. There had been talk about the closure of Drakelow C Power Station since late 2002, but E.ON denied the rumours. However, in January 2003, E.ON announced that the station was to close, and on 31 March 2003, the station was decommissioned. It was mothballed soon after and left standing until October 2005. At 05.00 a.m. on 17 November 2005, the two tall chimneys were demolished. By April 2006, the two 170 ft (52 m) tall boiler houses had been stripped down to their steel frames, which were demolished at 10.00 a.m. on 27 April 2006.
The six remaining cooling towers were scheduled to be demolished 11.00 p.m. on 19 July 2006. However, the six towers remained standing past their blow down time as a fault with the detonator was found. This was a disappointment for the thousands of spectators which had gathered to see the demolition. A new date for the demolition was set for 20 September 2006 at 10.00 p.m., when the towers finally came down - but again, not without fault. One set of towers came down at 10.00 p.m., but the other three failed after rabbits had chewed through the detonation cord. However at 10.50 p.m. the final set of towers came crashing down, ending the era of Drakelow Power Station.
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