A third power station is planned for Didcot -- burning waste cooking oil from fish and chip shops and food factories as fuel.

But proposals for a 15 megawatt "bio-fuel" power plant, which would be dwarfed by its massive coal and gas-fired Didcot A and B power station neighbours, have been attacked by town councillors.

Signalling a "strong objection" to the plant, the council's planning committee said it was concerned about damaging effects on the environment, including emissions of harmful gasses, the smell from burning cooking oil and animal fats and the risk of polluting Moor Ditch which drains into the Thames at Long Wittenham.

Margaret Davies, deputy leader of the council and acting chairman of the planning committee, suggested the term 'bio-fuels' was merely a way of dressing up a process for the disposal of waste oil from the food industry.

The planning application -- by Tecgen, of Surrey -- will be determined by South Oxfordshire District Council. The Environment Agency will consider a parallel application dealing with technical aspects of the plant, on a site at Southmead Industrial Park.

Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride are among a list of "prescribed" gasses that would be emitted from nine 20m-high chimney stacks.

The planning committee was worried about noise and air pollution for people living in mobile homes 220m to the south at Foxhall Manor Park as well as residents on the nearby Ladygrove housing estates.

Tecgen said the £6m plant would be the first of its type in the country and was in response to a raft of national, regional and local policies to promote the development of renewable energies.

If planning permission is granted, the plant will be built on just over one acre of mostly open land owned and occupied by Air Products, which produces gases for industrial uses.

Oxygen for the combined heat and power station would be piped from the Air Products site, while Air Products would take its electricity from the new power plant, with any surplus electricity going into the National Grid.

Electricity would be produced with diesel generators fuelled by "virgin" oils such as rapeseed. Waste animal and vegetable oils and fats would come from the food industry.

The plant would only require a staff of three or four, and vegetable oils and animal fats kept on storage tanks on the site would involve four to five tanker deliveries a day.

In its planning application, Tecgen said the impact of the plant -- surrounded by industrial and commercial development at Southmead -- would be insignificant.

But town councillor Alan Thompson said: "It will be a processing plant -- not a power station. By using the words 'bio-fuels' they are making it sound good."

Fellow councillor Peter Read said: "We should oppose the plant if only because of the amount of dioxins that will be discharged into the air, which will contribute to global warming -- apart from having an effect on the air quality locally."