How expensive would gas and electric have to be to drive a revival in UK coal mining ?
I believe increases in tin prices have made a couple of Cornish mines viable again. Could we ever see the same for coal ?
Would bugger my parents up, as the first thing my Dad did in the 70s when we moved in, was to knock the chimney breasts out ;)
Now we, however, have a gas fire with a proper chimney ....
Well as gas is likely to fall in price if the greenies ever let fracking happen. Even then the price of US coal has fallen dramatically since they went down the fracking gas route, so much so that we import a fair bit (along with wood pellets) to keep our lights on...
Fracking will not drive the price of gas down in the UK. They will get it out of the ground ASAP and export it to Europe via existing pipelines. The sensible thing would be to keep it for ourselves but it won't happen. A lot of people will have to put up with all themuck just to benefit CMDs pals in the oil/gas industry.
Increased use for large scale power generation would probably fall foul of all kinds of eco regulation...
Widespread domestic use like that seen in the past might be difficult to return to with smokeless zones in many large towns, and modifications to buildings removing fireplaces.
Solid fuel stoves that integrate with wet heating systems would probably be more practical - but the costs are high, and not all systems will be compatible.
On Friday 15 November 2013 16:32 Jethro_uk wrote in uk.d-i-y:
I cannot believe people who still do that (and I've met a few)
We have a small (but still 4kW) coal stove in the centre of the house because:
1) The power goes out 2-3 times a year for several hours. At times like that, it's nice to have the core of the house warm. 2) Putting a lod of heat into a big brick structure dead centre seems to really add a level of comfort to everywhere else (that are nominally heated by electric rads).
Do you *really* believe they have a cat in hell's chance of stopping it?
Sadly, no. There was a resurgence of interest for a few years, with South Crofty mine in Camborne looking very promising with lots of exploration work going on, but it went into receivership in June of this year. An earlier revival, at Mount Wellington mine, was active for about 15 years from 1976 to 1991. AFAIK, there are no plans to re-open any other tin mines in Cornwall, although preliminary exploration work seems to be going on in a couple of places.
Dave.
Fracking is not thee same as north sea gas. The underground resources are ours and not shared gas fields under various countries. With north sea gas if we didn't extract it a lot would have been extracted by someone else with no benefit to us.
With fracking there is only us that can extract it and we can do what we like with it.
The sensible thing to do would be to sell the gas to those who don't believe in GW as those that do won't want it. Likewise with electricity from windmills we don't want but you do.
Abandoned deep mines are pretty much impossible to reopen, it's impossible to make them safe enough to work in. When you abandon such a mine, you implicitly write off all the remaining coal in it, and anywhere nearby.
If there are coal seems worth mining which are nowhere near an abandoned mine, then those could become viable, but not currently.
There's an enormous glut of cheap coal in the world at the moment for many reasons. For us, it would be impossible to compete with the excess capacity the US has, since they switched to shale gas, and have much cheaper open cast mines in the first place.
Gas is already more expensive than Imported coal: the real question is how expensive would imported coal have to be?
And I am afraid the answer is 'bloody expensive'
WE picked all the low hanging coal fruits 100 years ago :-(
Sounds like a good plan... let someone else burn it an drive up their CO2 emissions, while we use the cash to build some nice low carbon nukes.
Struggling with the concept of a command line processor being of that much value?
Ah, in cloud cuckoo land as usual. The rights to drill will be sold off The frack gas will be sold (in Europe) at exactly the same price as "normal" gas as it will be competing with it. (Not the case in the USA) It will make virtually no difference to the supply situation as it will be competing with vast Russian/Norwegian gas.
It won't be "ours" unles the gov. nationalises our gas/oil industry. (You really think that's gonna happne shitferbrains?)
The earthquake thing is a canard. The real problem will be all the muck and filth as they drill wells every ten miles apart and transport vast quantities of equipment and filth about the highways.
In ten years or less, we will be back to square one. Banksters and CMDs pals will make a fortune. We'll just have expensive gas. Or rather you will, I don't use it. The gov. is lying as usual.
Ah well, it'll give the wind turbine whingers something else to worry about.
There is already a return to coal happening on the QT. That is underground gassification which is going on/planned in several places. Worse than fracking, as the coal is gassified,huge voids are left underground which in due course collapse. That leads to gas releaseson the surface.
Of course being brain dead, the NIMBYs haven't realised this.
We nearly ran out of gas last Winter. Don't feel safe.
If we choose to do so.
If we choose to.
it is ours, the government owns the rights to it all, unlike north sea gas where we owned the drilling rights but others could extract the gas as they went under multiple countries.
In effect whomever could get it out fastest got more of it. With fracking its all ours and we can do it as fast as we like.
The same as mass building turbines then.
GAS is cheaper than electric and you do use it, every night and probably every day too, don't lie about it.
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean its a lie.
There wont be any wind turbines without gas, how do you think they make the cement!
I'd imagine the ecco folk would get very annoyed unless they have solved the issue of polution with coal cheaply. Brian
Several 'closed' mines, are now having the spoil heaps worked ... what was non-viable to extract in the 50's is now economically sound.
Some tosh in that article, for instance:
"The basic idea of UCG is that you find coal seams which are up to 500m (1,641 ft) underground - far too deep to mine, and probably too expensive and dangerous as well. "
500m is too deep to mine? Plenty of UK mines had shafts well above 500m, quite a few were around 1000m with workings even deeperSome info here
and here
(ignore the claimed 1400m as it appears to be wroing)
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