Brad Williams, who manages site transition for AGL, put it simply: “About 700 holes are drilled in the side of the chimney, and they’re packed with a small amount of explosives.” On Tuesday that work paid off. The two 170-metre stacks of the Liddell power station in the Hunter Valley dropped one after the other, and the demolition was streamed online.
Each chimney has a base 20 metres wide. Williams told the ABC the method was like bringing down a tree. Crews cut triangular sections that act as a hinge, then sliced through the reinforcement at the base and rear. “It’s an awful lot of work for a 10-second event to safely bring them down,” he said.
Chris Druery, the station’s closure manager, described the principle the same way. “We basically blow a wedge out of the front of the stack in the direction that we’re trying to fell it in,” he said.
Fifty-two years of coal
AGL, which has owned Liddell since 2014, retired the plant officially in April 2023. It had run for more than 52 years and, at its peak, supplied electricity to around one million homes a year. The New Daily noted that only about 1 per cent of thermal plants worldwide operate past 50 years.
The station was once a flashpoint in Australia’s climate fights. AGL announced in 2015 that it would close it in eight years. The Turnbull and Morrison governments raised alarm over the plan, and Liddell became a lightning rod. In 2019 AGL said the first unit would shut in April 2022 and the other three in 2023.
Williams said the stacks had stood as an icon for the site and the region for decades, particularly for former employees. “Bringing these stacks down really does signify a move into opening the site for reuse as an industrial energy hub, and with that comes new jobs, new opportunities and new developments.”
The site is to host the 500 megawatt Liddell battery, which stores energy including from renewable sources. Federal and state Labor governments welcomed its opening in March. They said it was preparing to power around 200,000 homes on the main national grid within months.
Reaction
NSW Premier Chris Minns, speaking before the blast, called the plant “an incredible source of energy that’s really fired up NSW for many, many years”. He added: “It’s an important change, but I think today is actually quite iconic in relation to what it means in terms of where the transition is up to, and I would take the opportunity to actually thank all the workers who’ve worked at Liddell.”
The Nature Conservation Council NSW said the demolition showed “the shift to clean energy is working”. Chief executive Jacqui Mumford said it proved a move to reliable cleaner energy was achievable and “already well underway”.
The state’s use of coal power still draws scrutiny. On Monday a parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales heard that the Minns government’s coal industry statement, which lets existing mine expansions and extensions go ahead, conflicts with advice from the NSW Net Zero commission. Since the 2023 election the government has approved at least eight such coal expansions and extensions.
Sources
- Liddell power station’s famous chimney stacks crumble into history in massive blast
- Towering smoke stacks crash down on coal-fired history
