Don't forget - October 17th and 18th is the Great Climate Swoop. Help us shut down Ratcliffe coal power station for the day.

 http://www.thegreatclimateswoop.org/?q=frontpanel

We need to get real with this - we are not going to 'shut down' Drax or Ratcliffe.

We didn't 'shut' Kingsnorth.

We did gain excellent publicity.

If we stick with 'shut' - the protst will be branded a failure.

Ignoring the fact that your comment is a reply to a comment and has nothing to do with the article in question, you are wrong to say that we didn't shut down Kingsnorth. In parliamentary questions after the 2008 climate camp it was revealed that the power station had been switched off for a three week period covering the period of the camp. Then, during the E-on Face-off 48 hours of action later in the year, the power station was shut down again by a lone intruder who switch off the turbines and hung a banner reading 'no new coal'.

The Greenpeace action which led to the trial of the Kingsnorth six also shut down Kingsnorth, and the climate camp action which led to the trial of the Drax 29, that blocked coal into drax for over 16 hours and while that didn't actually result in the power station shutting down due to coal stock piles it was a significant disruption.

@ realist - saying we need 'realistic objectives' but then not offering any is just trolling IMHO.

Unless we are aiming to stop catastrophic climate change, then we are just a media stunt to 'gain excellent publicity' and any objectives we set to meet this aim are meaningless.

If the objectives of shutting down power stations are unrealistic, we need to raise our game to make them realistic - or we need to give in and admit we're all fucked.

And I'm not willing to admit that that. I'll do more, and I'll encourage others to do likewise - there seem to be quite a few suggestions on this page to follow up. Anybody else with me? Or do you, like Realist seems to be doing, want to throw in the towel now?

We can win, but we're going to have to fight.

The objective of shutting down a power station isn't unrealistic. As pointed out, they do it for us when we go there in numbers. Drax was also shut down on the day of action at the first Camp for Climate Action. They didn't admit it, but it obviously was.

You can't shut down a coal-fired power station by restricting its coal supply. Not unless you can keep the coal out for days or weeks, anyway. They always have huge stocks of milled (i.e. powdered up) coal inside. The unmilled stuff you can see outside is only part of the stock. So conveyor belt lock-ons etc. are just a symbolic nuisance. Not saying don't do them, just don't get carried away with exaggerated notions about their effect.

But Realist is half right. Power stations -or generating units within them- are regularly shut down for days or even weeks for maintenance. They are routinely taken on and off line according to demand. So shutting down even a big one like Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Kingsnorth or Drax is no big deal. The system can cope with that. Pound to a Penny Ratcliffe will be shut down in advance of the October action, like Kingsnorth, like Drax. Then they'll lie and claim we're threatening power supplies to people's homes, hospitals etc!

The only way a power station will ever get shut down by activists is by ambush tactics -a small posse of determined and knowledgeable people who know exactly what they're doing and whose security is tight enough that nobody but them knows they're going for it. They also need to be lucky. Even then, what's the point? OK, it's a surprise, but it would be coped with in 5 minutes by bringing on reserve capacity. For that to be even a slight problem, it would have to be done at a peak demand time of day during very cold weather.

So whether they close it down because there's hundreds / thousands of us camped / raging outside or we do it by surprise guerilla tactics, the most that can be achieved -and even that's not guaranteed- is a temporary shift from coal to a bit of extra oil, gas or nuclear generation. It's symbolic and the only real gain is publicity.

We do need to think of other tactics.

It's coming...

 http://directaction.info
 http://elfpressoffice.org

Some might say its already started
 http://www.indymediascotland.org/node/16229

if you want results Just you wait till the Sea Shepherd heads out again
we will embrace the true pirate spirit. this year it gets personal

one lone foe member id derby fighting to stop 2 incinerators in the area .where is her backup .five other people are helping her . they are suposed to be an organisation .dorothy batles on no money to buy paper and inks only out of her own pocket . she has asked for help ./well i used to donate to foe but now wont .where does the money go derby needs help stpo the incinerators .one in sinfin burning household waste .which the planning will go through next week if no suport or help comes / the worse one is in spondon burning toxic /hazardous and nuclear waste /spondon is high in cancer now / there are two groups on facebook .no incinerator in sinfin .and spondon against cyclamax incinerator /join and send objections in . dorothy cant do the lot /the only foe members been in derby /against rolls royce /never sat outside with banners each day but sat in a field getting pissed . thats no good .when the police came they ran off .and trees got cut down ./we dont need that .we need help but proper help ./no incinerator in sinfin help stop it wednesday outside council house 5.45 pm