OT: For those who really think UK coal is a viable option

[The Natural Philosopher]

Honestly, can you compete with that?

Like this?

[Jonno]

The Natural Philosopher scribbled

What century are you in? There are no deep mines left in the UK.

[Fredxxx]

I believe you have just confirmed NP's point.

[tim.....]

Only because we closed them as un-economic

there is still, theoretically, 100s of years of supply down there

tim

[Chris Hogg]

Quite. In fact those dumpers are mere Dinky toys compared with the bucket-wheel strip mining machines

(a couple of dumpers in the background). Then the major cost becomes not the mining but the transport. But these days, with bulk carriers, even that is absurdly cheap. For example, in the latter part of last century it became cheaper to ship kaolin from Manaus in Brazil,

1,400km up the Amazon, to Finland, than it could be mined and shipped from Cornwall.

[Jonno]

Fredxxx scribbled

What point?

The majority of coal mined in the Uk is open cast. Small mines are closing all the time.

[Jonno]

tim..... scribbled

Yup, a secret supply we can use when the rest of the world has used theirs. Deep mining is pretty much the only way of getting anthracite.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed

And sod all open cast

[The Natural Philosopher]

which is my whole point

Theres oodles of all sorts of uneconomic energy around

[Jonno]

The Natural Philosopher scribbled

Plenty of Turnip hot air for starters.

[DerbyBorn]

It never ceases to amaze me that shipping stuff half way around the workd can be properly costed out. We seem to ship rubbish - thake the recent loads of bleach bottles washed up on Cornwall. Why are we shipping something that can be readily made anywhere. We should be building processing plants for such stuff. (Sorry OT))

[Tim Streater]

What aspect(s) of that process amaze you?

[alan_m]

Often because in any one country there are only a couple of big players who operate a cartel. It's only imports that generate any competition in pricing.

[Tim Watts]

a) Because the country of manufacture has well cheap labour and poor labour laws;

b) We cannot organise a piss up in a brewery.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Actually its cheaper to ship from - say - Hong Kong to Felixstowe than from Felixstowe to London...

[The Natural Philosopher]

c) container shipment is per mile the cheapest transport on earth..

[tim.....]

until we run out of the other stuff

tim

>

[Brian Gaff]

My uncle used to live next door to an open cast mine in Leeds, now its been built on and is a mixture of hubbubs and open spaces.

Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

10,000 years of fertile nuclei

[Dave Liquorice]

Aye, stupidly cheap. I think a standard container shippped from the Far East to UK is in the order of £2,000. Thats a 40' high cube 2660 cu ft capcity container. You can shove pretty much anything into it provided the gross weight limit isn't exceeded. If your widgets pack to 10 per cubic foot, that's 26,660 widgets, shipping 7.5p/widget, distance 12,500 miles, just takes a while around 50 days...

I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of getting the container to you, offloaded, and container taken away to be more than the cost of getting the container from the Far East.