How many pits would be open?

[Wheldale]

If the miners had won the miners strike in 85, and the only pits to close would be ones that were exhausted of reserves, would anyone like to guess how many collieries would be operating today? Just a thought I had in the bath! lol

[John]

After all the reading of old papers, about the same as is now. The strike was provoked by "the powers that be" They used every dirty trick tactic in the book to smash the NUM, then Britons most powerful union.

Now lets look at some of the notes from the papers dating back to the first few months of the strike.

Thatcher came very close to throwing the towel in, she also feared that NACODS would follow the NUM, if they had the strike would have been over very quickly!!

Even after the aftermath of an early victory, the last weapon would have been the "bean counters" reports on each colliery. From what I understand happened after the strike was introduction of bonuses to create "red ink". Many pits were "proved on paper" to be uneconomic.

In my estimation, had the strike been won by the NUM in the early days, all pits would have been closed as uneconomic within the same framework.
The government was determined to rid itself of the coal industry.

NOW, lets look at the industry IF, the government had had a viable fuel policy instead of killing off an industry.

Yes, many Midland and Yorkshire pits would still be open today, a couple in the North East, maybe one in Scotland and an odd one in Wales.

At a guess, Hatfield, Calverton, Hucknall No2, Cotgrave, Daw Mill, Shirebrook, Kellingley, and probably a couple of dozen more would still be producing in excess of a million tons a year. Some now would be nearing the end of life. But Selby and probably another "super pit complex" would be taking up the shortfalls.

Problem now is all the old Midland "super pits" are flooded, as are the Durham and North East pits, probably the Yorkshire ones too. So what coal reserves are in the vicinity of those pits is sterilized for ever to conventional deep mining practices.

Even if they are dewatered, the seams will be soaked, strata damaged by water, making roadway drivages impossible.

I cannot see the UK having a mining future in coal, best I see is coal bed gassification.
There is the possibility of opening new pits east of the Midland pits, say in Lincolnshire eastwards. But the depth would be a major factor as would the heat at those depths.

[erichall]

With regard to heat underground, I believe ,John, that you've had experience in working overseas. Can yo, or anyone tell me what measures are taken in say the gold-mines in S.Africa, which I understand are very deep and hot.
The immediate answer that comes to mind is greater stress on improved ventilation which I often felt was never given the stress it required in the British Coal Mines. An example of this was given me when we moved into the S.Yorks area, and I was asked to attend a 'working Development Meeting'. It caused great amusement when I said that the requirements for heading out were simple. We would be using FSV's and would require a minimum of 10k cfm per heading. This raised various terms of amusement,derision etc.etc. the general consensus being 'No way'. When asked why I'd arrived at that figure, which was laughable, I proceeded to inform them that this was the minimum required by HMI to use 100h.p Diesel Vehicles in order to achieve our minimum dilution factor, and that it was a Statutory Requirement under the Diesel Vehicles (High Moor) Ammendment Regs. and that we had already used this figure successfully.
Their thoughts seemed to be that you provided the least possible ventilation required to dilute CH4, whilst ours wer the opposite. You provided the maximum possible.
Incidentally. we demanded and achieved our aims.

[John]

From what I've read Eric, the deep gold mines use refrigeration to lower the temps.

When I was working at Boulby, in North Yorks, the ambient rock temperature at those depths was 108F. The mining method when I was started was by undercut, drill and blast with diesel LHD's mucking out. So you can imagine what the heat was like. Again at that time, we only had the one fan operating on the surface, blowing air down the N02 shaft via four four foot metal tubes. Return air went up the same shaft.
So the intake air was pretty warm to start with.
We acclimatised after a few weeks to those conditions, although the humidity was in the low single digits!!

[Wheldale]

I worked on the West Driefontein Gold mine in South Africa. Although 3000m deep it was classed as a cool mine. Very little cooling was done, except by the black miners who would have a open airline or perforated airline that cooled some of the working places. There used to be many cost tables on the wall in the pit head stating how much a open air costs in wasted air!!

Usually the man riding shaft was the downcast shaft. Some shafts had a refridgeration plant near the top that blew chilled air into the down cast shaft.

Now when I worked at the Leeudoorn Goldmine, they had refridgeration equipment in the main haulage ways that just blew chilled air out. Leeudoorn was classed as a hot mine. Whilst there I saw a cooling tower. This was a 20m diameter shaft that was sunk 20m. chilled water was sprayed in this shaft as the ventilation current passed through it, thus chilling the air.

I was also told that at Western Deep Levels (deepest mine in the world) they were using ice jackets to work in although the jackets were not apparently very good.

When I worked in South Africa in the late 90's there was alot of talk in goining down to 6000+ m's and seroius consideration was given to building accomodation underground too. No doubt with the price of gold being so high at the moment alot of thought will be going into these ideas.