Fire in chicken-litter power plant
Firefighters averted disaster at a Norfolk power plant by stopping fire spreading to tonnes of chicken litter when an electrical fault caused a wooden walkway to burst into flames.
Firefighters spent two hours in the fuel hall at the FibroWatt plant at Thetford, bringing the fire under control after the alarm was raised at 10pm.
Fire officer Alan Prior said if the fire had reached the chicken litter, which is burnt in the power plant’s boilers, it would have caused a serious problem.
Thetford is the largest of three power stations in the UK that burn poultry litter to produce electricity. It generates 38.5MW of power and disposes of 400,000 tonnes of poultry litter a year. The project won a contract under the UK government’s Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation, whereby a premium price was payable for electricity generated by selected renewables schemes.
FibroWatt’s sister company, Fibropower at Eye, was put out of action for a few days following a fire two weeks earlier.
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