Scargill on the need for British coal.

[John]

There's a power station in one of the northern states that uses carbon capture technology, at present the carbon is stored in an abandoned Canadian mine. I don't know how they do it, but so far is successful.
I thought all UK imported coal came from Australia, Poland, South Africa etc, where mining laws and conditions are similar or better than what was in the UK? China actually imports coal and uses every ton it mines itself.

As for nuclear, it has a bad safety record, and we leave behind a mess for our future generations to clean up. Very little mentioned about it, but it is a heavily subsidized industry done to make it appear as a cheap source of power.
If it was that cheap, commercial shipping would use it!! But there's only ever been one ship in the commercial shipping world ever to use nuclear energy, and it was retired as being too expensive to run!!

[dazbt]

Aug 5, 2008 9:42:41 GMT -5 John said:

There's a power station in one of the northern states that uses carbon capture technology, at present the carbon is stored in an abandoned Canadian mine. I don't know how they do it, but so far is successful.
I thought all UK imported coal came from Australia, Poland, South Africa etc, where mining laws and conditions are similar or better than what was in the UK? China actually imports coal and uses every ton it mines itself.

As for nuclear, it has a bad safety record, and we leave behind a mess for our future generations to clean up. Very little mentioned about it, but it is a heavily subsidized industry done to make it appear as a cheap source of power.
If it was that cheap, commercial shipping would use it!! But there's only ever been one ship in the commercial shipping world ever to use nuclear energy, and it was retired as being too expensive to run!!

China stopped coal exports in January of this year but has since restarted exporting once again. In 2007 they actually exported more coal than they imported ie 53,000,000 tons exported and 51,000,000 tons imported, presumably an attempt to create some sort of trade balance. (either way it is not that far off the total UK coal usage, so not to be sniffed at)
Their export trade is in lower value thermal coal to contracts in India and Pakistan whilst most of their imported coal is high quality mettalurgical coal from Australia.
John I'm sorry but I can't agree with the 'suggestion' that nuclear energy is less safe than coal, both in terms of direct and indirect deaths, despite what Mr Scargill says about Uranium miners, Chernobyl and even non disclosed numbers of injuries and deaths from leaky Russian power stations. How many thousands of coal miners are killed at work each year, what number of mining disease related deaths go unpublished each year, how many deaths are caused by ongoing coal provided pollution, many of those who suffer indirect injury resultant of coal burning have never even seen a coalmine.
The other aspect of nuclear power being much more expensive isn’t quite born out by the fact that some countries actually make a profit by exporting their nuclear produced electricity. France derives almost 80% of her electricity from nuclear power stations, the are the world’s largest exporter of electricity and make billions of $s (£s, €s) profit by doing so. Not only that but the French EDF have recently made a multi billion £ bid to buy out a majority of British Energy (our own UK nuclear business), so at least the French know how to go about making it pay.
You could be right about there not being many nuclear powered ships around, but there's not that many coal fired ones either, and certainly no coal fired submarines.
I still love coal, the coal industry and coal miners and believe that both will be with us for many more years by the way …………… ;D

[John]

Nuclear energy is heavily subsidised Daz, not that I'm arguing coal is clean or safe to produce, far from it, but with newer "clean" coal technologies, it can be used without taxpayers dollars propping the industry up.
Here is just one article on nuclear subsidies, but don't forget the waste produced that has a half life of thousands of years, and we have thousands of tons of the stuff stored around the world for a future generation to sort out!!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Printer Friendly Version E-Mail This Article


Published on Saturday, May 19, 2001 in the Portland (ME) Press Herald
Dirty and Unsafe
Nuclear Power No Relief From Energy Woes
Wind, solar, biomass and geothermal sources are the wave of the future.
by Susan Sargent

The Portland Press Herald's May 10 editorial, "N-power: First choice for a second chance," is off the mark when it sides with the Bush administration in reviving and expanding nuclear power as a long-term energy solution.

Nuclear power is a dirty, expensive, unsafe power source that costs U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars each year. Advocating a new generation of nuclear power plants as a long-term energy solution leads our country in the wrong direction.

Since taking office, Vice President Dick Cheney has touted the industry's mantra regarding the "clean" advantages of nuclear power over fossil fuels, hoping to use the energy policy as a catalyst for nuclear renaissance. Contrary to claims by Cheney and the industry, however, nuclear power cannot be accurately characterized as clean or green.

Both the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission have agreed that such claims are unsubstantiated. Nuclear reactors do not emit the traditional air pollutants produced by fossil-fuel powered electricity plants, but they do carry the potential for significant public health risks when it comes to addressing the storage of radioactive waste.

Nuclear reactors generate long-lived, highly radioactive wastes that need to be carefully isolated and stored. Some scientists conclude that it is virtually impossible to assure that fission-reactor wastes would not pose unacceptable risks to current and future generations.

Utilities have not found one single safe site for storage, or a secure method to transport radioactive waste. In the U.S., public acceptability considerations led Congress to choose the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, although it wasn't the optimal technical solution.

Despite initial claims of "too cheap to meter," nuclear power in the United States has become too expensive to afford. The nuclear industry has received over the years, 60 percent of all federal energy research and development dollars. Yet customers of nuclear utilities still pay far higher prices than their conventionally supplied counterparts.

A 1993 Energy Information Agency study found the average bill from a nuclear utility was more than two dollars per kilowatt hour higher and nearly $17 per month than from a conventional utility.

Why the disparity despite the huge government handout? Because utilities have been unable to control the costs of constructions, retrofits, repairs, and maintenance, while storing waste pushed costs even higher.

One of the primary problems with nuclear power is its inability to perform without substantial federal and state subsidies. According to the Congressional Research Service, the nuclear industry has received more than $66 billion in taxpayer research and development subsidies since its inception.

Additional supports are granted in the form of a taxpayer-financed insurance policy known as the Price Anderson Act. At the state level, nuclear power plant operators have cost consumers higher-than-average electricity rates and have reaped billions of dollars in so-called "stranded costs" in states that have undergone deregulation of their electricity markets. Nuclear power has remained an energy option over the past decades largely due to these huge taxpayer subsidies.

In France, the nation that made the biggest investment in nuclear energy, the national utility, Electricite de France, is carrying a $30 billion debt, mostly because of its nuclear investments.

And while French nuclear advocates like to praise the nation's cheap domestic power prices, in reality, when compared to 10 other European Union nations, France ranks fifth in domestic power prices. In fact, since 1985, France's electricity prices have seen the smallest decrease in the EU. And while four new reactors are under construction there, none have been initiated since 1996.

Most other major industrialized nations have stopped construction of nuclear power plants altogether, and many are planning to shut down plants that are still working.

The U.S. nuclear industry shows signs of decline all around: Reactors are closing nationwide, and nuclear power plants are projected to lose market share of electricity gener- ation.

Worldwide, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that in the next 20 years global nuclear capacity will fall by half, and the Worldwatch Institute projects a sustained decline by 2002 at the latest.

The Bush-Cheney nuclear power strategy is headed in the wrong direction. Instead, the federal government should focus more on energy efficiency research and the development of clean, safe, renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass or geothermal.

According to a 1990 study by the Rocky Mountain Institute, every U.S. dollar invested in energy efficiency displaces seven times more global warming pollution than a dollar invested in nuclear power. Now that's a long-term energy policy!

Susan Sargent (email: [e-mail]) lives in Chelsea, Maine and is the Maine representative for the National Environmental Trust, a national non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group.

[John]

There is an energy that is safe and should have taxpayers money poured into it, "NUCLEAR FUSION" or better known as cold fusion.
We could end up with individual fusion generators at each house or a larger unit for a neighbourhood!
The Japanese bought all the papers from the scientists working on the project, and are now working in secret to develop it.

[John]

Here's some more on the cost effectiveness of nuclear power, there are tons of reputable costing sites including a report of why Wall Street doesn't back nuclear power too.
www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php


Is the French nuclear industry government or private owned?? Were the reactors built with taxpayers money?? Are they subsidised by the French taxpayers???

I found out it's 90% owned by the French government, and has an appalling safety record!
www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,568467,00.html

[dazbt]

The nuclear power generation question is much the same as the previously 'discussed' global warming question, there are many industrialists, politicians, scientists and 'Save the Earthies' who argue that nuclear power is the way to go whilst many others argue the opposite, .................

[John]

Very true Daz, BUT, we know conclusively what the dangers of nuclear are from the many accidents world wide, especially with thousands of acres of land in the Ukraine sterilsed for generations after Chernobyl, and the major melt down of the Three Mile Island powers station in the 60's here in the US.
Unlike the so called "man made warming" which is only conjecture at this point in time.

The big problem with nuclear power is the public are not told the real monetary cost per unit it actually costs! Thats not counting the many coverups at stations around the world, including UK stations.

Power companies over here have no plans to build any new nuclear power stations because of the costs, they can never make a profit from them, nor can they get investors to put money into them. Seems only politicians want nuclear, I know I wouldn't want to live in the shadows of one!

[dazbt]

Aug 6, 2008 10:09:04 GMT -5 John said:

Very true Daz, BUT, we know conclusively what the dangers of nuclear are from the many accidents world wide, especially with thousands of acres of land in the Ukraine sterilsed for generations after Chernobyl, and the major melt down of the Three Mile Island powers station in the 60's here in the US.
Unlike the so called "man made warming" which is only conjecture at this point in time.

The big problem with nuclear power is the public are not told the real monetary cost per unit it actually costs! Thats not counting the many coverups at stations around the world, including UK stations.

Power companies over here have no plans to build any new nuclear power stations because of the costs, they can never make a profit from them, nor can they get investors to put money into them. Seems only politicians want nuclear, I know I wouldn't want to live in the shadows of one!

How many have died as a result of these 'many' nuclear power generation accidents, certainly no official deaths relating to The Three Mile Island incident and figures for Chernobyl resultant deaths vary wildly in estimation, I believe officially there are less that 100 deaths attributed directly to it, don't get me wrong on the Chernobyl catastrophe I like most of the world believe that these figures are downsided and that thousands must have been affected by the radiation leakage long term. Even the intial alarming figures of the area and intensity of contamination are proving to have been over the top, again I'm not saying that Chernobyl isn't responsible for massive contamination, but simply that there was an overestimation of the actual intensity.

“But according to figures from the Chernobyl Forum, an international organisation of scientific bodies including a number of UN agencies, deaths directly attributable to radiation from Chernobyl currently stand at 56 - less than the weekly death toll on Britain's roads.”
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm

So, where are the other nuclear power generation catastrophies that have resulted in similar numbers of casualties both immediate and long term that could in any way equate with even the wildly underestimated official figures of coal produced power.

There may have been some deaths attributed to nuclear power generation in Britain, but I can’t recall any being categorically declared as such, there have been claims of an increased incidence of Leukemia in areas local to nuclear stations, but that is also true of many more claims of localised leukemia increases around non nuclear generators and power lines and even radio masts.
I’m certainly not an expert on anything, but what I do know is what I read, I can’t believe everything that I do read, but apart from Chernobyl I can’t recall any figures of radiation deaths from nuclear power stations that are other than long term estimations provided without proof. Nuclear power has been with us for more than a couple of generations particularly in the US and UK, where are the figures of the long term effects on those millions that have lived and died in those countries in that period. California for instance has for many years (at least 40 years) provided a substantial part of their power from nuclear, what is the death rate in California related to unsafe reactors?

Cost ……………….. I just don’t have anything else to say, I don’t know how expensive 'the secret cost' is in comparison to other energy sources, but if it is as bad as indicated why is the US reliant on it for more than 20% of the country’s electricity supply and France 80% of theirs whilst looking intently on throwing more money away by taking over British nuclear power production with all its inherrent decommissioning costs ongoing, I can’t really imagine that anyone would believe that the French government would be willing to subsidise the UK’s power supply, but I can’t budget within the limits of my own pension so I couldn’t even attempt to see why a French business would want to taken over massive long term losses.

[dazbt]

Ugh ??

“ March 28, 2008 · After a hiatus of nearly three decades, nuclear energy is booming. Seventeen power companies in the U.S. are making plans to build more than 30 nuclear plants.”

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837


“For a while, most people near Three Mile Island expected the plant would close in 2014, when its original license expires. But the exploding cost of energy changed the equation. Exelon, the plant's owner, is talking about investing hundreds of millions of dollars to keep it running for another 20 years.”

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89168810

not to worry, I have it on reasonable authority that Barack has promised a relook at the future of US nuclear power stations, I hope he isn't as confused as I am.

[John]

You will note in that article Daz, that the companies are not financing the building of the plants, state and federal taxpayers will be footing the bill. Like I stated, Wall Street has already said they cannot find investors to finance any new plants.
To be honest, I can't forsee any of those plants being given planning permission, as the American public are against nuclear power, I think there will be plenty of opposition towards it.
The last plant to shut down was in Sacramento, owned by the city of Sacramento and it's citizens. Never really payed for itself and is now costing the US taxpayer millions in clean up and rent for storing the highly toxic waste on site.
That 30% of our power coming from nuclear stations is due to drop in the next few years as more plant is aging and will be decommissioned.
There are several large coal fired stations being built as I type this, our own utilility is building one large coal and one natural gas station to cope with growing demand for power, all based on clean modern technology.
There are plans to build large geo thermal plants in Nevada, Utah and California where the underground heat occurs for such plants

I think all those that were irradiated at Chernobyl have died now, but in it's wake is DNA damage to the populace from the fall out.
What will happen to the coffer dams built around the old plant?? It's forecast when they collapse, the dust cloud will dwarf the original disaster, spreading a dust plume around the world. We havent seen the last of that power station and it's inherent problems yet.

Like I stated earlier, fusion is the way to go, what radiation it does produce has a half life measured in weeks, there may also be some added benefits too, the old Alchemists dream of hidden treasures set off by the process!

Fission is old dangerous technology now and will follow the valve radio and television into history.

[dazbt]

This is about the best list of the ‘many’ Nuclear Power Plant ‘catastrophies or accidents’(including those which were perhaps military based under the auspices of experimental commercial power units) that I could find evidence of, there could well be more. But from what evidence I see presented the resultant devastation caused by nuclear supply is not quite as dramatic as some would want the world to believe, especially if held in direct comparison to world wide coal mining disasters that have been fully documented throughout a similar period, sad as they are. Without doubt or flexibility of reason, since the introduction of nuclear fuelled electricity the comparative damage to humanity is proven to be far less than the recognised and properly identified damage caused by coal.




NRX, Canada (experimental, 40 MWt)
1952
Dead Nil
Enviromental effect Nil
Condition, repaired (new core) but now closed 1992



Windscale-1, UK (military plutonium-producing pile)
1957
Dead Nil
Widespread contamination. Farms affected (c 1.5 x 1015 Bq released)
Condition now , entombed (filled with concrete) Being demolished.



SL-1, USA (experimental, military, 3 MWt)
1961
Dead Three operators
Very minor radioactive release
Condition now decommissioned



Fermi-1 USA (experimental breeder, 66 MWe)
1966
Dead Nil
Environmental effect Nil
Condition, repaired and restarted, then closed in 1972



Lucens, Switzerland (experimental, 7.5 MWe)
1969
Dead Nil
Condition now, very minor radioactive release
Condition now decommissioned



Browns Ferry, USA (commercial, 2 x 1080 MWe) 1975
Dead Nil
Environmental effect Nil
Condition now, repaired



Three-Mile Island-2, USA (commercial, 880 MWe) 1979
Dead Nil
Minor short-term radiation dose (within ICRP limits) to public, delayed release of 2 x 1014 Bq of Kr-85
Clean-up program complete, in monitored storage stage of decommissioning



Saint Laurent-A2,
France (commercial, 450 MWe) 1980
Dead Nil
Effect minor radiation release (8 x 1010 Bq)
Condition now, was Repaired but decommissioned in1992



Chernobyl-4,
Ukraine (commercial, 950 MWe) 1986
Dead 47 staff and firefighters (32 immediate)
Effect major radiation release across E. Europe and Scandinavia (11 x 1018 Bq)
Condition now Entombed

Vandellos-1, Spain (commercial, 480 MWe)
Dead nil
Condition now entombed

[dazbt]

Re Coal and Nuclear ..................... here's one I was saving till last (or there abouts :;
The cycle of mining and burning coal actually creates many times more released radiation than nuclear power stations produce as leakage.
Here's a true story, at the time the Chernobyl disaster the company I worked for had a bunch of engineers working in the coal mines of South Eastern Poland (Silesia). Initial reports were that the worst concentrations of contamination were being blown across that area of Poland and steps (although pretty slowly organised steps) were made to evacuate these lads and return them home out of the danger zone. A week or so after the event they arrived in Hull off the Zeebrugge ferry and were met by a group of Government gentlemen who ushered them aside and "Geiger Countered" em (or whatever the technical term for measuring a person's bodily radiation is termed). Conclusions of the testing was that all of them were safe to be allowed to set foot on English soil and intermingle with us lesser contaminated public, but the interesting thing was that the official doing the checking told them that they were all within acceptable levels and that he didn't believe that they had been affected by the Chernobyl fallout .............. but the added that as a result of them all being coal miners and living in areas affected by coal burning power station fallout that they were expected to have been exposed to high levels of radiation. When questioned this 'expert' related that areas of high levels of radiation were known within UK mining areas, the highest levels being amongst Cornish tin miners and areas local to their ancient mining, closely followed by coal miners working and living in the North East and Yorkshire. Levels of absorbed radiation were apparently many times more in these coal miners than anyone working at or living within proximity to nuclear power stations.
I know that in China there are now commercialised industries extracting “Yellow Cake” Uranium from coal fly ash in sufficient quantities to make the process economically comparative to directly mining the Uranium.

There is, as they say, a ton of scientific evidence that the mining and burning of coal to produce electricity does actually create more exposure to radiation than the same cycle involved in producing nuclear power generated electricity, and that’s only the radiation contamination aspect.

[John]

Never heard of radiation in coal Daz, I knew it released high levels of mercury which does contaminate the sea!
I knew of the radiation in deep hard rock mines, my union the EEPTU when I was at Boulby called Newcastle University in to do tests in the headings. They found reasonable levels of "daughters of radon" a not too nice a gas that causes cancer! The Professor of mining who carried out the tests stated in his report to our union that as long as ventilation levels were continued at the present level, there was no danger.
I also found out that the logging equipment used to measure the percentage level of potash in the seam was actually measuring the radioactive level. Potassium salts are radioactive!!!!! No I don't glow in the dark anymore. ;D ;D

[dazbt]

Now, having discussed the facts and figures relating to the evils of nuclear power stations that have been “kept secret” from us all, what about these facts (or lies) relating to radiation from coal burning;

"Because existing coal-fired power plants vary in size and electrical output, to calculate the annual coal consumption of these facilities, assume that the typical plant has an electrical output of 1000 megawatts. Existing coal-fired plants of this capacity annually burn about 4 million tons of coal each year. Further, considering that in 1982 about 616 million short tons (2000 pounds per ton) of coal was burned in the United States (from 833 million short tons mined, or 74%), the number of typical coal-fired plants necessary to consume this quantity of coal is 154.
Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium.
Based on the predicted combustion of 2516 million tons of coal in the United States and 12,580 million tons worldwide during the year 2040, cumulative releases for the 100 years of coal combustion following 1937 are predicted to be:
U.S. release (from combustion of 111,716 million tons):
Uranium: 145,230 tons (containing 1031 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 357,491 tons
Worldwide release (from combustion of 637,409 million tons):
Uranium: 828,632 tons (containing 5883 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 2,039,709 tons
Radioactivity from Coal Combustion
The main sources of radiation released from coal combustion include not only uranium and thorium but also daughter products produced by the decay of these isotopes, such as radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, and lead. Although not a decay product, naturally occurring radioactive potassium-40 is also a significant contributor."
www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

[John]

I see there's loads of info to this effect Daz!!

I wonder what the damage to us was during the coal fire days in the UK?? I recall some horrific smogs in winter in my old city of Nottingham until the clean air act came into force. Some of them in the early 60's were so thick the buses stopped running!

[dazbt]

Aug 13, 2008 10:40:18 GMT -5 John said:

I see there's loads of info to this effect Daz!!

I wonder what the damage to us was during the coal fire days in the UK?? I recall some horrific smogs in winter in my old city of Nottingham until the clean air act came into force. Some of them in the early 60's were so thick the buses stopped running!

They were pretty bad weren't they, even pedestrians had a job avoiding each other, literally couldn't see a hand in front of you. Sheffield fogs were multi coloured in the 50s, red, orange, yellow and white, and all that long before LSD became popularly available up north.
The interesting bit about the facts of radiation from coal mining and particularly resultant of its burning as well as the billions of tons of radio active flyash laid around, is the fact that no-one is denying the problem, but neither is the anti-coal fired power generated Greenie League throwing the argument around either.

[John]

Yep, they were horrendous, the street lights had an eerie orange glow even though they were incandescent.
I recall one night, Dad was a truck driver, and he was on a "nightout" He hated staying in digs, so got all his drops done and made his way home. He got as far as Daybrook, on the northern side of the city, parked up on the main road with full intentions of picking his truck up at first light. It was so thick he couldn't make it as far as hee wanted. Anyway, he walked about six or seven miles home as the buses had all stopped running, raods were totally empty of traffic.
Next morning he set off early, the smog had gone and only a light fog was left, he picked his truck up and drove it home where he stayed for the rest of the day.
When he picked his truck up, he spotted his boss's car a few cars down from his truck!!
His boss never said anything when he went back to the factory, so he assumed the car was there before he parked up!! ;D

[dazbt]

Aug 13, 2008 18:33:32 GMT -5 John said:

Yep, they were horrendous, the street lights had an eerie orange glow even though they were incandescent.
I recall one night, Dad was a truck driver, and he was on a "nightout" He hated staying in digs, so got all his drops done and made his way home. He got as far as Daybrook, on the northern side of the city, parked up on the main road with full intentions of picking his truck up at first light. It was so thick he couldn't make it as far as hee wanted. Anyway, he walked about six or seven miles home as the buses had all stopped running, raods were totally empty of traffic.
Next morning he set off early, the smog had gone and only a light fog was left, he picked his truck up and drove it home where he stayed for the rest of the day.
When he picked his truck up, he spotted his boss's car a few cars down from his truck!!
His boss never said anything when he went back to the factory, so he assumed the car was there before he parked up!! ;D

Continuing this fog thread in Monty Python style of the ‘Four Yorkshire Men’ sketch;



Fog, call that a fog?
We had proper fog in Yorkshire in them days, none of yer mamby pamby River Trent morning mist fogs here, our fogs were so full of coal dust and bit of iron, we used to burn it on t’fire, the iron in it melted an stuck to fire grate, and made sure they never burnt away.
Yorkshire fog hung over top of our towns all year round, so solid it were that we could run cars and lorries on top of it.
We used to cut it up into blocks using a saw and then build houses with it, until we had that big accident. The council decided to build us a new Town Hall with these fog blocks but the council workers were cutting fog from under the motorway that went over top of the River Dearne, course it wasn’t their fault they just couldn’t see through the fog, anyway when it collapsed and a bus full of nuns fell through it into the pit baths at Barnsley Main all future fog quarrying was stopped.
Narr that’s what we called proper fog !

[John]

Before I went to the NCB Daz, I worked for an electrical contractor. We were installing bus bar trunking in a factory during the times we used to get the smogs.
This factory was near the River Leen, at least what was left of it!
Two of the turners were 100% blind!! They operated capstan lathes, so all they did all day was use a plug and gap guage to check the parts being tossed off the lathe. (I doubt under the strict H&S laws today a blind person would be allowed near a lathe!!)
Anyway, it was mid afternoon and the fog was coming down pretty thick, next step was smog! We'd heard the buss's had stopped running and someone asked one of the blind blokes if he wanted escorting home as he lived a fair way from work. He said "Eee lad, thee will be as blind as me if fogs as thick as reported, I'd be better suited to escorting thee home"! True story too, no embellishments! I'll never forget that old feller.

When I was about 19, on nights at Clifton pit, which was within spitting distance of the Trent, some of our staff were late.
They used to travel together in one car. There route used to take them to Dunkirk, no no France!!!, there was a large traffic island where four roads met up, with a large firestation at one corner.
The missing lads had got on the island and couldn't see the exits!! They spent a fair while going round and round until one of them voluteered to get out and walk in front of the car to lead the driver to their exit!

It was always a bad low spot that island, there's now a flyover there.

[jeromeowen]

POST REMOVED.
Has no bearing on the subject and although is not blatant advertising comes very close.

[philipford734]

With referance to the Winscales nuclear accident, quite a lot of nasties where put down some coal shafts north west of Wigan. When I was working for a small mine we looked at some potential sites to develop, two where nw of Wigan but we where warned that we could not work them due to potential contamination from some deeper workings to the north west in the Shevington area. Welch Whittle was one pit in that area.

[John]

That will eventually find it's way into the water table then Phillip.
I appears mine water is already starting to contaminate the water table in some areas where pumping ceased years back.