King Coal and the Nuclear Heartland, Hand in Hand in Cumbria
by Marianne Birkby at Radiation Free Lakeland
The “nuclear heartland” is how Cumbria, home to Sellafield, the nuclear industry’s rear end is described. Cumbrians are told that new nuclear is ‘necessary to combat climate change’ even if that means tens of billions of tax payers money. Because the nuclear industry is “low carbon” (it isn’t). At the same time, Cumbrians are urged to welcome the reopening of the Whitehaven coalmine ‘ to produce steel for wind turbines.’ Radiation Free Lakeland, a local nuclear safety group are raising the alarm “Any deep mining in the vicinity of Sellafield should be forfeit, any plan which has the potential to increase seismic activity in the Sellafield area is reckless beyond belief. We hope others will voice their opposition”
Illustration-of-licences.for West Cumbria Mining with additionsjpg.jpg
From West Cumbria Mining’s License Map – with additions from RaFL
Is Cumbria Being Frogmarched into Nuclear AND Coal?
The plan to reopen the Whitehaven coal mine under the Irish Sea has been rumbling along for a few years with no raised eyebrows. Why are alarm bells not ringing out loud and clear? This nasty plan will go before Cumbria County Council in May (date tbc)
Most Gaseous, Dangerous Pit in the Kingdom
These are strange, confusing days. There is all round praise being heaped on the plans to reopen Whitehaven coal mine on Cumbria’s West Coast, the most gaseous, dangerous pit in the Kingdom. In 1815, Sir Humphrey Davy’s invention of the miner’s safety lamp was first tested in Whitehaven Coking Coal Mine because of its reputation for “firedamp” (methane) and fatal explosions. By 1816 the Davey lamp was in full use in collieries around Great Britain. A letter of gratitude was written by Whitehaven Miners to Sir Humphrey Davy in 1816….many of the miners signing the letter later lost their lives in the mine.
Honeycomb
The West Coast of Cumbria below both ground and sea is a labyrinthine honeycomb of mines. Not only coking coal but iron ore and many other minerals. This vast honeycomb of mines stretches to Sellafield. One of the earliest records of coal mining in West Cumberland dates to 1560, the last pit, the Haig, closed in 1986. There are old mine maps but these are far, far from complete. Understandably so, given the length of time that this area has been extensively mined. Many of the miners are still there in the dangerous honeycomb. Entombed in the same collapsed and sea inundated mine pits that the West Cumbria Mining Company wants to reopen.
Infamous Copeland By Election
In the recent infamous Copeland by election the candidates without exception declared themselves to be “big fans” of reopening the West Cumbria Coal Mine. They did this in true Alice in Wonderland style, expressing concerns about climate change while praising the plan to reopen the coal mine. For many years UK citizens have been subjected to a constant bombardment of disingenuous propaganda: ‘nuclear power is the answer to climate change and coal is far worse than nuclear for the climate’. The purpose of this propaganda being that we should welcome nuclear with open arms, while shunning coal. George Monbiot has consistently and aggressively set the pace: “Nuclear scare stories are a gift to the truly lethal coal industry.” Monbiot’s constant mantra in the last several years is that those who oppose nuclear power are uninformed, bigoted idiots. Now it appears that the idiots in Cumbria are being groomed to welcome both coal AND nuclear.
Homely Image
A recent article in the Daily Mail paints a homely image of a local mining firm returning to its traditional roots in Cumbria. This image is not quite what it seems. The £14.7m private equity financing for reopening Whitehaven mine has been put up by EMR Capital who say: “We are a specialist resources private equity manager whose team has a proven track record in the three dimensions critical to achieving superior returns:
- Successful resources exploration, development, operation and commercialisation
- Deep linkages to Asian markets – in particular, with commodity purchasers and end users, resources companies, investors and governments
- Private equity investment management”
In 2013 the Managing Director of EMR Capital, Jason Chang featured in the Taiwanese Press. The Taipei Times reported: “Jason Chang apologized” for his company’s recent “wastewater pollution incident “ and that ASE (Advanced Semiconductor Engineering) will “donate up to NT$3 billion (US$101 million) over the next 30 years to help promote environmental protection” in Taiwan. “ASE was fined NT$600,000 for discharging toxic wastewater into the Houjin River.”
PR Spin
The PR for reopening the coal mine seems to have worked its charms on the local Allerdale and Copeland Green party for whom the coal mine gets a thumbs up as it ‘will reduce imports of the coking coal necessary to produce wind turbines.’ This argument holds no water as in order to recoup money and make a killing the coal from Whitehaven would be aggressively exported worldwide. The coal and its by-products could end up doing anything from being burnt in coal fired power stations, processed into coking coal, making the vast amounts of steel necessary for a giant geological dump for radioactive wastes. The coal from Whitehaven was first processed into coking coal for the iron industry in 1723. Coke production did not however match local demand and tonnes were brought in from Durham. The Durham coke was superior in having lower phosphorus content, a factor of importance to the local hematite iron industry.
Turning the ground to a liquid mess
There are other ways to achieve the high temperatures necessary for steel production but even if processing coal into coking coal was the only way, the close proximity of Sellafield and the proposed Moorside site should knock this dangerous plan on the head. Extractive activities are known to cause earthquakes.
There are two contenders for the strongest earthquake in this region a 5.0 ML earthquake on 11 August 1786 had an epicentre just offshore from Whitehaven and a depth of about 16 km; a 5.1 ML earthquake on 17 March 1843 had an epicentre offshore from Barrow and a depth of about 15 km.
This may not be unrelated to the escalating mining activities going on the time. The only area in the UK to have experienced a liquefaction event is the village of Rampside, near Barrow in 1865.
High intensity and liquefaction phenomena are usually associated only with relatively large magnitude earthquakes. An earthquake in 1865 in the northwest of England suggests that a sufficiently shallow small event can also produce liquefaction.
The effects are well documented in historical sources and include sand fountaining. Modern investigation is confined to documentary evidence owing to the tidal environment of the area where liquefaction occurred. Analysis shows that the felt area of the earthquake was probably only about 200 km2; however, heavy damage occurred in the village of Rampside and the maximum intensity is assessed at 8. Liquefaction is not uncommon at this intensity, but such a high intensity is not usually produced by such small earthquakes. The magnitude was probably in the range 2.5–3.5 ML.” pure and applied geophysics November 1998, Volume 152, Issue 4, pp 733–745
Questions
West Cumbria Mining are inviting the public to ask questions so I asked the following:
It would be much easier to discuss your questions and provide answers from our team of specialists who will be at the event, rather than attempting to answer them in writing now. The event on the 2nd March is by invitation only – please find attached an invite, we would be delighted if you could come along to meet with us. Caroline Leatherdale, our environmental specialist will be there, together with a wide range of our technical team.”
Does your lump of coal feel lucky?”
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Wow this article is from 2017 – the first time that any press highlighted the fact that the coal mine might not be all it was being cracked up to be by the developers. There is an error in the article that was my mistake as the author of the article – the Jason Chang featured in the Taiwanese Press is not the Jason Chang Head of EMR Capital. In all other respects the article has proved prescient as the CEO of the coal mine has been appointed to the Committee advising the UK government on the dumping of high level radioactive wastes.
http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com
Study Molten Salt Reactors to stop coal.
I wish George Monbiot would shut the Fukushima up. A nuclear melt-through, two meltdowns and a partial meltdown – I’m not a environmental gatekeeping vegan musical writing pseudo intellectual Washington useful idiot – but that sounds bad to me. He could join the ‘silence of the lambs’ – the blanket media blackout. If we (the M$M) don’t talk about it, maybe it will go away in 180 to 320 years?
At what point, without fear of contradiction, can Fukushima be called the worst manmade environmental disaster ever? Now?
Chernobyl lasted 10 days before the core was contained; the cleanup for Fukushima is in its sixth year and could last 30-40 years; they can’t even find the core to Reactor 2 (the melt-through); meanwhile the radiation near the core is at ‘unimaginable’ levels; and 300 tons of contaminated groundwater is escaping into the Pacific every day.
[The crash in the Pacific fish stocks has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with this.]
So George, if the nuclear industry is so safe, perhaps you could relocate to Tohoku and keep us informed – in place of TEPCO, the Japanese government and the rest of the M$M?
I’m sure there is an easy fix – once we’ve developed the technology to do it. Spin that.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-07/new-radiation-level-fukushima-dwarfs-highest-peak-chernobyl
There are a lot of lies & spin about Chernobyl ! 57 deaths mostly in the cleanup team not the 200,000++ as predicted & what’s really strange is the lack of genetic abnormalities in the local flora & fauna & in fact the opposite is statistically true so much so as to warrant studies of other low radiation areas which confirmed a health benefit of low radiation. That’s not the official line.
Chernobyl clean up is being done MUCH FASTER that forecast – by mushrooms ! Mother Nature is better than us at Nuclear clean up.
That being said Nuclear is not a runner today except under circumstances of Financial/Political Fraud as in Hinkley C trying to screw taxpayers for £18Bn which will end being £25Bn for a 3Gwatt reactor when a new tech clean coal Power Station would cost £3Bn.
Then in not so sunny UK the Solar potential is 650 x more that consumption.
Its all about scamming money from the Sheep…………
Perhaps an opportunity to reach out to the good folk of Cumbria to let them know the good news: there is no global warming from CO2 – so the old nuclear lobby argument used by Thatcher to break the mining unions doesn’t apply. Environmentally-conscious Germany is building something like 40 new coal-fired plants after Fukushima scuppered the nuclear power industry there. Given the choice I would go with coal. Sellafield (Windscale) should be shut down. But from what you write you’re between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Please, check this out:
Saudi Arabia Uncovered
Reply
do i exist?
the idea is so ludicrous because you know that i do exist. i attempt to communicate regularly, to anyone willing to listen, and to any unwilling – i do not discriminate. i have been doing this job for years.
have i been doing my job? have i done certain things that needed to be done, written some things that needed to be written? do all the lights light up and all the rotors spin in the right direction? have i done all within my exceptionally limited power to urge people in a better direction, to reconcile people of different faiths, and to reconcile religious faith with science? do you believe these to be noble aims?
i have received nothing for my efforts but dead air.
you disappoint me.
do i exist?
Cheer up-we all exist.
I don’t.
If you would like to discuss the potential presence of thermite in the WTC dust try posting in any of the open threads on 9/11. The question has been extensively discussed here both ATL and BTL. We even hosted a copy of the most recent paper by Jones et al, and Prof. Jones supplied us with additional commentary. So, feel free to dive in.
just doing my job.