O/T King coal rises again

[Brin]

Each to their own I suppose. I wouldn't my kids anywhere near a mine thanks.

The Tories and New Labour failed by not investing in cleaner alternatives.

Quick cut and paste but it's how I see it:



Putting death rates from energy in perspective


Looking at deaths per terawatt-hour can seem abstract. Let’s try to put it in perspective.

Let’s consider how many deaths each source would cause for an average town of 150,000 people in the European Union, which – as I’ve said before – consumes one terawatt-hour of electricity per year. Let’s call this town ‘Euroville’.

If Euroville was completely powered by coal we’d expect at least 25 people to die prematurely every year from it. Most of these people would die from air pollution.

This is how a coal-powered Euroville would compare with towns powered entirely by each energy source:

Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year;
Oil: 18 people would die prematurely every year;
Gas: 3 people would die prematurely every year;
Hydropower: In an average year 1 person would die;
Wind: In an average year nobody would die. A death rate of 0.04 deaths per terawatt-hour means every 25 years a single person would die;
Nuclear: In an average year nobody would die – only every 33 years would someone die.
Solar: In an average year nobody would die – only every 50 years would someone die.

Howdy, looking at those stats there's not a lot to choose between coal and gas. Coal can actually have 99% of it's carbon emissions captured
but at a very costly effect, hence why it's still not commercially viable to use on such a massive scale.

As for nuclear, should it ever catastrophically go wrong, then you'd be talking millions not a few. Most likely also, a UK nuclear locked in zone for many many years, so in the builders we trust.

[Brin]

No, inefficiency and high running costs closed the mines

Grist high running costs didn't apply to all mines but smashing a union meant all....here's a small piece for you to ponder on.

On January 5 1989 Silverwood miners celebrated their fastest ever million tonnes of coal in a year, toasting the milestone in orange juice instead of the traditional champagne as they had to return underground. British Coal said the face worked at Silverwood was reaping rich rewards because the pit was in the black to the tune of £10m.

In March 1992 British Coal announced it was to invest £10,000 at Silverwood......sure that was a typo error. The investment was expected to provide work until well into the 21st century. At that period, Silverwood employed 790 men; the new Parkgate seam contained 11 million tonnes of high quality reserves; without the new investment the pit would have closed in seven years. In fact, it shut on December 23 1994.

Silverwood miners who had adopted Simply the Best as their theme tune completed their final shift at 1.15pm. NUM Branch Secretary Granville Richardson said: ‘There was a good 15 years life left underground.”

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

Grist high running costs didn't apply to all mines but smashing a union meant all....here's a small piece for you to ponder on.

On January 5 1989 Silverwood miners celebrated their fastest ever million tonnes of coal in a year, toasting the milestone in orange juice instead of the traditional champagne as they had to return underground. British Coal said the face worked at Silverwood was reaping rich rewards because the pit was in the black to the tune of £10m.

In March 1992 British Coal announced it was to invest £10,000 at Silverwood......sure that was a typo error. The investment was expected to provide work until well into the 21st century. At that period, Silverwood employed 790 men; the new Parkgate seam contained 11 million tonnes of high quality reserves; without the new investment the pit would have closed in seven years. In fact, it shut on December 23 1994.

Silverwood miners who had adopted Simply the Best as their theme tune completed their final shift at 1.15pm. NUM Branch Secretary Granville Richardson said: ‘There was a good 15 years life left underground.”

I don’t doubt that there were success stories dotted around the coal mining sector, but as an overall picture the available coal was of poor quality or nobody wanted it. Plus it was being mined at a cost that was massively undercut by other countries. Even at the peak of UK coal production we were buying coal from Poland

Add to this the issue of having a nationalised coal industry which made it harder ( nigh on impossible) to close the loss making pits and to put money into the profit making ones.

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

“I wouldn’t want my kids anywhere near a coal mine”

That’s an odd comment, because basically without coal mining in this area we wouldn’t be having this discussion and I doubt that RUFC would ever have existed.

It would be a mistake to compare the proposed Cumbrian mine with the mining operations at Silverwood, Maltby etc because the technology is very different.

[howdydoo]

“I wouldn’t want my kids anywhere near a coal mine”

That’s an odd comment, because basically without coal mining in this area we wouldn’t be having this discussion and I doubt that RUFC would ever have existed.

It would be a mistake to compare the proposed Cumbrian mine with the mining operations at Silverwood, Maltby etc because the technology is very different.

I meant I wouldn't want my kids working down a pit.

[great_fire]

I wish coal fires would make a comeback too. There's nothing to beat a real fire.

We have smoke control areas now. You can use those smokeless ovoids but the price has shot up as you would expect.

[avondalemiller]

..............i had the chance to go underground at Silverwood while at school in 1964(ish), we needed Parents consent. I never took the offer home to ask.
I'd love to see the diversity mob queueing for an underground job at the pit........lol

[great_fire]

Thing for me is Germany of all countries are investing more into their coal mining industry. Global capping my arse!

They are truly reliant on Russia for gas/oil etc so are looking back to king coal for their power. Soon other dominoes will start to tumble the same way now Germany have set the big ball rolling and sticking two fingers up to it all. Plus they've got plenty of immigrant man power to fill the job role.....now there's an idea for what's flooding into our country......oops hang on, didn't the Tories close all our mines.

They closed most of the ones that were still open, Labour closed almost as many before that.

They're not going to open them again though.

Fracking is what we should be looking at instead of importing fracked gas from the USA at very high cost.

Of course the fact that Sunak was a previous resident of the USA and is most likely moving back there in a couple of years has no bearing on his decision to ban fracking here and import gas from the USA.

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

I meant I wouldn't want my kids working down a pit.

Ah I see

[Brin]

I meant I wouldn't want my kids working down a pit.

Knock 20 years off me and I’d go back tomorrow if Silverwood was still open.