Monday 7 November 2016

Gedling Colliery : Twenty Five Years On

Back in 2011 I posted about my childhood links to Gedling Colliery, visit that post here.

And today is the twenty fifth anniversary of the pits closure, you can read about it on the BBC here.

The point of interest being, the paragraph:

"Although production ended in 1991, Gedling has been identified as one of three mines in the early 1980s that could have had a 'long term' future".

They mention Calverton & Corgrave along with Gedling as being in that field.  And I remember seeing men crying when it closed, and my own father telling me there were at least 90 to 100 years more coal down there ripe for the picking, cleaner burning, locally produced coal of higher quality.

Because that is the difference, we import vast amounts of coal; the last time I looked mostly from Ukraine; and everyone I've ever spoken to about it has described it as a dirty burning sludge laden coal.  It was formed differently, coal here was formed from flora in pre-history and burned cleanly, making carbon collection from the burning easier, and toxins like sulphur a lot less prevalent in fume content.

Coal is of course a fossil fuel, and needs temperament when using it, but British Coal was strictly speaking the better of possible environmental impact, and would have been easier to scrub the waste gases clean for than the junk being brought in, and still being brought in, cheaply from overseas.

All three of the mines mentioned are now gone, ALL the mines are in fact gone, but the coal is sitting there.

My only question for future generations being, if they need fossil fuels still in the future, will they open up and go back down for that sitting, high quality coal, will the mines and the learning curve for all that industrial knowledge need to be covered again at huge, huge cost, when it was just there, ripe for the taking when I was a boy?

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