At 9.00 am this morning, the towers at Chapelcross nuclear power station were demolished. The whole process took around 10 seconds from start to finish.
A siren sounded 5 minutes before the explosions, then again just before the demolition began. A group of us 'locals' had gathered up a farm track, at a safe distance, but with a good viewpoint. We took our last photos of the towers intact, then the left hand tower started to lean and silently collapse. As the second tower also fell, we finally heard the explosions. They were no louder than a clap of thunder from our vantage point, and the sheep and cattle in the surrounding fields weren't too frightened by it.
Within seconds we had taken a few photographs and it was all over: just clouds of smoke and dust where the towers had stood. As we walked back to our car, we caught the smell of the dust and explosives in the air as the huge dust cloud blew our way. By the time we got back to our house, it was surrounded in a cloud of fine particles. Half an hour later, when we returned after walking the dog, it had dispersed.
