Page 51 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

Zero Harm coal mining 37

to mine safety through lessening the labor intensiveness of the work. Innovations have
been consistent and impactful for their time. Beginning with hand mining, the industry
has evolved through the use of beasts of burden to supplement human labor, the intro-
duction of commercial explosives, and the development of mechanized systems,
including steam-driven water pumps, diesel-powered mobile mining equipment,
continuous miners, longwall technology, large-volume drag lines, and autonomous
surface haulage units, etc. As economies of scale increased, the use of human labor
to mine coal decreased, which benefited both productivity and safety. Today, longwall
mines can produce more than 35,000 tons of steam or metallurgical coal in a 24-h
period and tens of millions of tons per year, while surface coal mines in the Power
River Basin of the Wyoming/Montana region of the US have achieved production
exceeding 115 million tons per year.
As well as remaining a primary source for electricity generation, coal has been a
foundational material for the development of society over the millennium and today
remains at the center of debate regarding the economics of power generation and the
environmental consequences of global warming. Some industry observers and critics
have concluded that the risk of coal as a fuel sources is unacceptably high and warrants
coal being phased out of use. Some of these observations originate from a reaction to
poor safety outcomes, but have been supplemented with correlations between coal-
fired power plant emissions and atmospheric warming—a broader environmental
and societal risk [13]. Neither of these legitimate concerns negates the history of coal
as a competitive fuel source.
In both the US and abroad, coal remains a central electric power fuel source due to
its relatively low cost to extract and its stable market pricing relative to other sources
including nuclear, oil, and solar. Its low relative cost is a driver for its use in devel-
oping economies; however, these economic benefits do not reflect human costs, which
have created barriers to entry in developed countries with robust regulation requiring
capital-intensive controls that are generally absent in developing countries. Coal is
found is abundance in many countries and is relatively easy to burn and coal-fired
power plants can be scaled up across a wide range of power outputs making it flexible
and modular, especially using modern turbine technology.
A common historical theme in coal mining is that without taking risks, mining
could not advance, both figuratively and operationally, at least not with economic jus-
tification. Given that coal is first and foremost a source of power and heat and second-
arily a consumable in the production of steel, justification for coal mining as an
essential human need is harder to rationalize. This struggle has been characterized
by widespread and severe injury and illness of miners through both acute mechanisms
and chronic exposures. Its value as an economically important fuel also reflects its risk
as a material capable of generating explosive concentrations of gas and dust in addi-
tion to other hazards associated with underground and surface mining.
While the general public in most developing and developed counties is generally
unaware of the source of their power supply [14], broad access to information through
the internet and social media has resulted in broader and deeper advocacy, both pas-
sive and active, with regard to the social acceptance of coal mining. In countries like
the US, Canada, and the European Union, an increasing percentage of the population
is opposed to coal mining, especially in geographies in which there is proximity, but