Search goes on for missing Rotherham men after final part of Didcot power station is demolished

Demolition workers Ken Cresswell, 57, and John Shaw, 61, both from Rotherham, and Chris Huxtable, 34, from Swansea, were trapped under 20,000 tonnes of rubble when the structure unexpectedly crumbled on February 23.

Four people died in the disaster, but only one body, that of Michael Collings, 53, has been recovered so far. It is still unknown what the causes of the tragedy were.

A remote demolition brought down the remainder of the decommissioned site at around 6am on Sunday, in a unique operation that made use of remote-controlled robots.

The building - which was due for demolition when it partially collapsed - was too unstable to be approached and a 50-metre exclusion zone was set up around what was left of the building.

Plastic explosives attached to the structure were detonated and once the site is considered safe, teams will be deployed to resume searching the remnants of the plant for the first time since May.

Roland Alford, who is the explosives contractor at the power station, said the four-month delay in completing the demolition was necessary on safety grounds.

He said: "There has been quite a lot of criticism about delays, questioning why it has taken so long to get to this point, but the fact is nothing like this has ever been attempted before and this is not a simple demolition.

"We have been working on it night and day since March and built up quite a sizeable team of very expert people to work on this, to come up with the charges, the methods of doing it and training."

He added: "It was almost unthinkable to send people to work underneath there and place charges, given the fact the building could come down at any moment - you legally can't justify that."

Robots of a variety of sizes will carry out some of the work deemed to be too unsafe for humans, a number of which can be controlled remotely using a sophisticated camera set-up.

Roads and trains were halted in the surrounding area while the demolition took place.