Coal

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29890, 2 August 1962, Page 3

Coal

Sir, —Various facts, widely disregarded, support your leading article, “Displacing Coal Miners.” Burning coal destroys its valuable chemicals, tar and derivatives. It is also an extravagant way of producing heat and power. Stations like Meremere lose 70 per cent, of the heat of fuel in the condenser water. Ordinary steam locomotives and domestic fires waste more than 90 per cent, of the heat of the coal they burn. World coal resources are already dwindling. Research for the. United States Atomic Energy Commission produced an estimate that by 1992 coal j will have become too scarce and too expensive for most of its present uses. It should pay to find other work for miners and to minimise output now, to conserve coal resources, and to resume more active mining early next century, when coal will be really valuable. Meanwhile it should cost less to bring Kapuni gas to Christchurch than to take electric power to Wellington.—Yours, etc., ARTHUR LUSH. July 31, 1962.