Alcoa considers next attempt to demolish power station

ALCOA will try again to demolish its Anglesea power station as soon as next month, but has not decided exactly how this will happen.

At Monday’s Alcoa Community Consultation Network meeting at the Anglesea Senior Citizens Centre, Anglesea site manager Warren Sharp gave an update on the analysis undertaken of the partial collapse on May 30.

He said a range of factors had contributed to the power station not fully toppling over, including the angle of the cuts on the columns, the boxy design of the columns (which may have had an “airbag” effect on the charges), the timing difference between the cutting charge and the kicker charge (possibly complicated by the overhanging boiler in the structure), the size and type of charges, and the pre-weakening of the structure.

Principal demolition contractor IDS is finalising a contract with a subcontractor (not the same one) for the second attempt in September or October, Mr Sharp said, and “the job over the next month is to tick all those factors off”.

Alcoa’s preferred option is to use explosives again, as the power station is too heavy to pull over and would pose many risks to workers if the structure was to be cut apart from the top down.

In response to feedback, Alcoa will wait for winds that are blowing away from the town – from the south-east to the west-south-west – on the day of the demolition and will do more to communicate with the community, including “writing a letter to all 1,100 letterboxes in Anglesea”.

Mr Sharp said Alcoa would do everything it could to make the next demolition a success.

“We can’t afford to have a third attempt at this – you’ll have someone else talking to you next time if there’s a third attempt.”

Alcoa’s monitoring has detected extremely low levels of asbestos fibres, with the detectors (which are 10 times more sensitive than the national standard for asbestos) detecting the equivalent of one fibre in a litre of air, five times.