Green protest continues at UK power station

LONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) A protest over pollution at one of Britain's biggest power stations continued today after green campaigners occupied the plant overnight, the station's owner RWE Npower said today.

Greenpeace campaigners invaded the Didcot A power station in Oxfordshire, central England, early yesterday, chaining themselves to a coal tower and scaling a chimney stack to protest about greenhouse gas emissions.

RWE Npower said 24 protester remained on the site. Police were due to hold talks with them this morning.

The plant is still operating, though at reduced rates, RWE said.

The company had used other stations, including an oil-fired plant, to make up for the drop in output from Didcot.

Two units at the 2,000-megawatt Didcot plant were offline for maintenance before yesterday's protest. Of the other two units, one was operating today at reduced rates, while the other was idle, a spokesman said.

RWE Npower said it was using an alternative route to transfer coal into the plant's boiler.

''We expect to be burning coal along with gas during the day, especially at the peak demand time this evening,'' the company said.

The Didcot station was commissioned in 1972 and is one of the UK's oldest. It is one of several plants due to close over the next five to 10 years.

In August, about 600 green protestors staged a demonstration at Britain's biggest power plant, the Drax station in northern England, which is the UK's biggest single industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

REUTERS SY KP1631