Centrale Thermique Terres Rouges
THE ABANDONED POWER PLANT IN LUXEMBOURG
The ‘Centrale Thermique’ was used to produce electricity using the highly toxic furnace gas from the neighboring Terres Rouges blast furnaces. The power plant was built in 1951 and abandoned in 1997.
The electricity made by the station was intended mainly for industrial use. In fact the power plant was part of the Terres Rouges site, a huge iron works in Luxembourg.
The iron works opened in 1872, as one of may in the area, and was upgraded to produce steel in the 1880s. The steel industry in the area flourished and as a result Luxembourg became one of Europe’s largest manufactures of steel. Following the discovery that the gasses released during the melting of iron could be used to produce electricity, the power station was built in 1951.
For a long time, the iron and steel industry was the locomotive of Luxembourg’s economy, until the beginning of the steel crisis in the 1970s. During the 1990s, Luxembourg saw another crisis in the steel industry. As a result the blast furnaces in the region began to close down, making the power station unnecessary.
Consequently the power station closed down in August 1997, a day after the last blast furnace has been shut down. I took these photos of the ‘Centrale Thermique’ in 2008. The site was demolished in 2017. Also check the close-by ‘Centrale d’Oxygène Liquide‘.
