Nine climate change activists who spent the night camped on top of Didcot Power Station’s 200-metre-high chimney today said they were preparing to did in for several more days.

Protestor Joanna Bates, 21, told the Oxford Mail the group were determined to remain as long as they could after breaking into the site and reaching the top of the stack early yesterday morning.

She said: “It was actually quite toasty in here. We can go inside a bit so we’re able to stay warm and we have lots of warm sleeping bags.

“We want to stay up here for at least a few days — as long as we feel necessary and we feel we’re physically able to. It feels really important to stay and make clear that we do not like what npower is doing and we are not happy with new coal power stations being built across Europe.”

She added: “The weather is definitely not as good today. We’re basically in a cloud up here.

“We’ve blockaded ourselves up here and we want to stay in control of when we come down.”

Today, site owners RWE npower are expected to obtain a legal injunction giving them the power to remove the protesters.

Police last night said it was too risky to remove the group in fading light, so the stand-off continues.

Twenty environmentalists broke in at 5am yesterday on bikes, splitting into two groups in the 2,000 megawatt coal-fired power station, which can produce enough electricity for two million homes.

Eleven activists who had chained themselves to the conveyor belt carrying coal to the furnaces were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass after a five hour operation to cut them loose.

Nine remain on top of the chimney.

The power station has continued to operate throughout the protest.