The Oil Drum

A short while ago I wrote about my concerns that, with a growing drum roll of articles decrying the use of coal, we might find ourselves short of power, at a time when we have a real need. The tone of articles written about the mining industry are virtually all negative, with very few counter-arguments being made to demur at the emotive tone of the language used in writing about this subject. The thought returned today as I read the article in the Guardian that Leanan had highlighted in Wednesday’s Drumbeat. The piece, by George Monbiot, bemoans the creation of a new surface mine in Wales.

As I watched the machine scraping away the first buckets of soil, one thought kept clanging through my head: "If this is allowed to happen, we might as well give up now." It didn't look like much: just a yellow digger and a couple of trucks taking the earth away. But in a secure compound behind me were the heaviest beasts I have ever seen - 1,300 horsepower or more - lined up and ready to start digging one of the largest opencast coal mines in Europe. In Romania perhaps? The Czech Republic? No, on a hilltop in south Wales.

I am thinking of calling this the Marie Antoinette Syndrome – she of the “let them eat cake,” quotation. Because there is a reality to life that seems to be beyond the comprehension of writers of this ilk. George Monbiot refers to the opening of the mine as being a sign of a “re-entry into the coal age,” but we never left it. Coal has been, and is, used extensively around the world as a fuel source, and in the United States produces more than half the electricity consumed. It is one of the cheapest (in straight dollars per kWh) sources of power for a utility. Solar is currently about five times as expensive as coal power. Further the coal in place in the UK, even if not at the moment a reserve, still totals more than 45 billion tons .

We are very rapidly approaching the point where world oil production will likely peak and then start to decline. The quantities of fuel that will have to be found to replace this gap are not likely to be found in the occasional wind farm, dotted over the landscape, nor in solar panels on the roofs of very profitable corporations. The alternatives to letting the populace “freeze in the dark” are starkly limited. A significant amount of that power will likely have to come from coal, for a number of different reasons.

Those of you that have been following the reports of the trapped miners at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah may have read that there is some debate as to whether the incident was caused by the mining itself, or whether it was a naturally induced earthquake. Also you may not understand what the mine is describing as “retreat mining.” And so I thought to write a short description that explains both, without dealing specifically with the details of what is happening in Utah, for which I do not have specific information. There is, however, a basic mine map at the NYT site that I am going to use as a reference.

The latest information from the MSHA website reports

Friday, August 10, 7 a.m. EDT
The small vertical drill bit punched through to the mine on Thursday night at 11:57 pm EDT. The large rotary drill has reached a depth of 1,016 feet. A microphone was lowered into the cavity through the drill stem, and no human noise was detected.

UPDATE: One of the questions that arises in this type of situation is to see what caused the blockage of the passageways to where the miners were working. If you look at the first picture in the Reuters series shown on Friday it would appear that the rubble pile is caused by the floor lifting. This is the equivalent of the pillars punching through the floor, which they could do if they were loaded up, since the floor can be the weakest of the three components (roof, coal and floor rock). If this is the case, it is not clear how extensive that blockage is. But you can see that the roof rock appears intact. They may well have run the drill down through the cavity to see how much room there is in the area where the men are expected to be.

UPDATE Sadly the news of the miners being alive was due to failure in communication, and only one has been found alive. HO Update [2006-1-4 0:23:58 by Prof. Goose]:Twelve miners have been found alive. (link) This is an amazing story, and one that has been weighing on many people for these last two days.

For those watching the pictures from West Virginia there are a couple of things you might want to know.  The mine itself is driven into the side of a hill, and there are a series of tunnels along the side of the coal seam which have been driven into the coal taking out the full seam section.  The coal seam is roughly flat, but dips a little as it goes further away from the access.  In coal mining jargon the entry to the mine is known as the portal, and it appears there are about five of these and they are just more than man high.  The covered tube that leads out of one of the tunnels is a covered conveyor belt, and when the mine is operating the coal is loaded onto the belts near the production face, and carried by the belt out of the mine and up into a silo that contains the coal, until it can be loaded into a truck or rail car that will haul it away from the site.