TECHNOLOGY FOR BRITAIN'S FUTURE

Transcription

1 TECHNOLOGY FOR BRITAIN'S FUTURE

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4 Macmillan London Limited 1976 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. Picture research by Jeanne Griffiths Diagrams by Osborne Marks Associates and Berry/Fallon ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Published 1976 by Macmillan London Limited London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York, Toronto, Dublin, Melbourne, Johannesburg and Delhi Filmset in Great Britain by Servis Filmsetting Limited British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Coal: technology for Britain's future Index 333.8's HD Coal - Economic aspects - Great Britain

5 Contents Foreword Sir Derek Ezra 6 1. The Significance of Coal as a World Energy Resource Roger Vielvoye 8 2. Coal and Coalmining Sir Andrew Bryan The New Mechanisation Professor E. L. J. Potts, Dr R. K. Dunham and John Scott Selby - The Mine Michael Pollard Selby- The Community Jeremy Bugler New Uses for Coal W. T. Gunston 129 Index 142

6 Foreword This book appears at a time when world attitudes towards energy have been transformed. Untill973 energy, when it entered into calculations at all, was regarded as a stable resource of infinite capacity, something so permanent and constantly available that it could be safely left to take care of itself without causing concern to Governments. The fuel crisis in October 1973 changed all that. Almost overnight, the action of the oil-producing countries in quadrupling oil prices and restricting output revolutionised the world situation. Energy became a major factor in global politics. For the first time it was widely realised that fossil fuels supplies were not infinite. Reserves of oil, even in the vast fields of the Middle East, would begin to dwindle after attaining peak production in the 1990s, and natural gas - already approaching the point of exhaustion in the United States -could not be seriously relied on when planning for the twenty-first century. The one hydro-carbon fuel the world has in abundance is coal. There are large deposits in most continents, and although in Britain we have been working coal seams intensively for more than a century, we still have reserves which could be worked for at least another hundred years with our present machinery and equipment, and perhaps for many hundreds of years if new techniques can be developed for mining thin or hitherto inaccessible seams. The British Government was among the first to see what the changed situation meant for coal. No longer could Britain rely on cheap imported oil while running down the mining industry. The decline in coal production which had been continuous since the mid-fifties had to be halted, and then reversed. In a detailed examination conducted with the National Coal Board and the trade unions of the mining industry, the Government 6

7 concluded that it was essential to the country's economy that coal should be revitalised, and gave full approval to a ten-year programme, 'Plan for Coal', that would double the historic rate of investment for the following decade and thereby restore the industry's production capacity. The coal industry has made a good start on this plan. Investment is going according to schedule and the exploration programme to find fresh coal reserves has been establishing them at a rate four times greater than the current rate of mining. The prospects for British coal are bright. Our research and development programmes are forging ahead to improve the performance of mining machinery, using the most up-to-date methods of automatic and remote controls. Considerable resources are also being devoted to the processing of coal, and in conjunction with other coal mining industries and through the International Energy Agency, the N.C.B.'s Coal Research Establishment is working on the production of gaseous and liquid fuels as well as other sophisticated chemical derivatives from coal, and on the more efficient combustion of solid fuels using techniques such as fluidised bed combustion. The concept of the 'Coalplex'- in which heat, energy, and a multiplicity of by-products could be produced from a single coal processing 'refinery' - is one of the positive offshoots of the years of concentrated research by coal's scientists. All this points to an expanding and prosperous future for the world's coal-mining countries. But prosperity will not fall into our laps: it will have to be planned and worked for. This book plots the paths which brought the coal industry in Britain to its present position. It also looks at the opportunities for the future. Choosing the right course and sticking to it will require all the technical and human skills at the disposal of Britain. The prize for success will be a strong place among the economically significant nations of the future -the energy suppliers. Sir Derek Ezra 7