COAL: OUR WASTING ASSET

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 7th Year

Issue

Issue No.

6

Date Released

Feb 1954

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1COAL: OUR WASTING ASSET

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

BFI synopsis: complete issue on fuel economy and fuel conservation.
Film User synopsis: provides some eloquent examples of waste (criticizing, in passing, the practices of another nationalized board) and suggests various economies.
NCB Commentary - Round about now most of us are glad to think we’ve passed the turn of the winter. The year’s on the mend, and we like to look forward.
But none of us will forget 1953.
Yet, beside the panoply and the acheivements, it was a year like the one before and the one before that.
A year in which one of our own scientists called us " the campion coal wasters of Europe".
And yet for years now, coal’s the very thing we’ve been short of.
Even though big machines in big new mines may be the answer, it’ss be years before we have enough of them.
Because we use coal stupidly, we waste too much of it. So while our industry and our skill can produce examples to the rest of the world, the way in which we use the raw material behind our technical marvels has been called the worst in Europe.
More than half our coal is used for raising steam. Too much of that steam goes to waste while there’s still work left in it.
Where does all this waste heat go? Up the spout, of course.
Take even the great electrical generating industry. Turbines use steam as well as it can be used. But last year, of all the heat put in, only a third came out as electricity.
Where did the other two thirds of the power in the coal go? Up the spout.
The railways use about 14 million tons of coal a year. They’re about 6 per cent efficient. It’s a fact that piston steam engines will never do better than ten per cent. As long as they’re the rule, there’ll never be less than 90% going -- up the spout.
All right when you’ve got it to chuck away, but we haven’t.
But the railways aren’t the only ones. We’re all in it together, and it’s our own fault that we’re still living in the past, when coal was cheap and east to get, and nobody cared how much has to be used.
Some people say there’s an easy answer to that -- make coal so expensive that you’d need an armed guard to watch over it. If the stuff were to cost 20 pounds a ton you’d expect people to think twice before they started pumping it up the chimney.
Maybe that’s a fanciful solution. But what industry ought to be doing is scrapping the old plabt and putting in something more efficient.
Industry says it can’t replace it because it would cost too much.
So last year the Government stepped in and offered 20 year loans to put in fuel saving equipment. Has anyone been rushing to get as the money?
Not so’s you’d notice it. The tragedy of it all is that we still don’t realise -- or won’t -- that coal is our most valuable raw material. It’s almost too valuable to burn at all -- when we know what science can get out of it.
Well, what’s to be done? First and foremost, save our coal. Get as much from it as we can. That’s just plain commonsense.
Parliament’s moved out of the mist far enough to start setting the best brains to work together.
But what can we all do, all of us, right now, to help get us out of the mess we’re in? CUT OUT THE WASTE.
Let’s try putting in modern boilers in our factories. They’ll save their costs in five year’s working.
Stop this -- and this.
The railways could be doing something. They need large coal. But does it have to be so large that they have to break it up again? When are we going to realise that this stuff is valuable?
Of course the railways are trying to make do with less of these ... and, as equipment becomes available, to give us more of these.
But this is a job for all of us. British houses being what they are, there are plenty of black spots in the home. We don’t want to have to go on like this, do we? Electricity is too costly and refined a fuel to use for space heating.
In the home, we’ll still want to use solid fuel for water heating, and for the open fire we all say we can’t do without. All right then, but at least let’s try to use fires which send into the room as much heat as possible, and as little up the spout.
They don’t cost much to instal, and advice on choosing them doesn’t cost anything. But this means more smokeless fuels to burn on them.
That’s what they’re working on at this place, the Coal Board’s research sttion near Cheltenham.
Smoke costs us 150 million pounds a year, when you take into account cleaning and doctors’ bills. The new fuels they’re working on here will give you twice as much heat -- and no smoke. They treat it and carbonise it and turn it into a sort of briquette.
This may be the domestic fuel of the future. The problem is, how to produce it cheaply enough.
And what’s the mining industry doing towards putting its own house in order?
In the older collieries, the Coal Board is spending nearly a million pounds installing mechanical stokers to burn low quality fuels, and in training the men to use them.
At new pits, completely modern equipment is going in.
New fuels are being exploited, and at more than one colliery methane gas, known and feared by the miner underground as firedamp, is being harnessed and burned in the colliery boilers.
And what of the working miner himself? He goes on getting out the coal.
The further he has to go underground, the more difficult and expensive the job becomes.
The miner’s doing his part; output per manshift is creeping up on the scale.
But when he comes up from his pit and looks about the world around him, how do you think he feels? The smoke alone that fouls our skies represents each year the work of 10,000 men like these.
Look at it this way. Look at these old blokes -- retired miners. Between them, they did 550 years underground. You can say that they spent seven of those years hacking out coal that never did anything for anybody -- except make them filthy. They spent another 405 years getting out coal that just went to waste. What a record to look back on!
But -- this is the time of year to be looking forward. What about making 1954 the year when we started going something about it? If we don’t, we know what we can expect.
Power cuts.
Another fuel crisis.
And finally this, as we find that our industrues can’t keep going because they wouldn’t help themselves in time.
No, that’s not what we want. We want a better standard of living, not a worsening one, and decent clean towns to live in with our families.
That bang -- the first one -- cost 500 million pounds -- more than enough to rid this country of smoke for ever.
It’s up to us. We’re the New Elizabethans, aren’t we? We’re the people who can produce these miracles, reaching out into the skies and into the future.
How much longer are we going to go on living in the Dark Ages?

Researcher Comments

The script for this story was written by Francis Gysin. Music was provided by Kenneth Morrison. Commentary recorded 7 January 1954.

Keywords

Mining; Fuels

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for Synopsis
Film User   Vol.8 No.95 September 1954, p436.
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Sound

Charles T. Parkhouse

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Producer

Francis Gysin

Director

Francis Gysin

Support services

Francis Gysin

Cutter

Fred Cook

Commentator

John Slater

Camera

Kenneth Reeves

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Cutter

Robert Kruger

Camera

Wolfgang Suschitzky