Conversion could mean Wisbech incinerator not needed

I recently read in the national press that the remaining conventional coal-fired power stations in the UK are no longer required to generate electricity as sufficient power is now available from renewable sources.

It occurs to me that they could be converted to waste incinerators to dispose of refuse and waste and to create electricity at the same time.

They are almost always located well away from centres of population and have in place the infrastructure for bulk handling of fuel as well as a connection to the national grid.

I believe, as a civil engineer who was engaged on coal-, oil- and gas-fired plants, that the redundant access roads, large buildings and chimneys must be convertible at lesser cost than the construction of waste incinerators on green field sites.

After all, Drax Power Station in Yorkshire has been successfully converted to burn biomass.

This use would mean that the proposal to build a huge incinerator plant close to the centre of the historic town of Wisbech, within metres of a large secondary school, would be unnecessary. Wisbech is not served by a railway and its trunk road, the A47, is a congested single carriageway along which the garbage would have to be trucked in large quantities into the town.

If this idea were to be adopted, the rural Fenland environment could avoid the imposition of an unwelcome industrial eyesore.

David Crouch,

Wisbech