Word: coaling
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Electricity starts at the power plant, produced by a spinning generator driven by various means: a hydroelectric dam, a large diesel engine, a gas turbine or a steam turbine. The steam is created by burning coal, oil or natural gas or by a nuclear reactor...
...olden days--say, the 1930s--electricity was generated by coal-burning or hydroelectric plants located a short distance from the people who would use it. That meant when problems hit, the lights went out locally, even if locally meant a large city. But in the 1970s new federal utility laws threw transmission lines open to all comers. Now utilities could get their power wherever it was cheapest, even if that meant it had to travel farther: power generated in Alabama is sold to Vermont. The nation's power grid--the vast system of lines, transformers and switching stations--was never...
Proponents of the policy hope that it will boost energy independence, but not everyone thinks that's a good idea. Because so much of the American gross domestic product is involved in the coal, petroleum and nuclear industries, walking away from them would set off severe economic shock waves. "The grid is a $360 billion asset," says Clark Gellings, a vice president of the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute. "It's literally a national treasure." Gellings believes that decentralization will play some role in the energy industry of the future, but he thinks it will always be a minority player...
...reasons for going back into the mine pile up on top of one another like chunks of coal clunking into a hopper, none obviously bigger or more important than the next. In addition to the joy of battling Mother Nature, there's the money. The $150,000 may help him retire early, but meanwhile "I was off six months, and you have to have a job." He has no memory of the drowning dream described by his wife. Unlike most of the other eight miners, several of whom claim to be depressed and/or on Paxil, he says he sees...
...love mining," says Fogle. "If I had to work in a factory, I'd go nuts. You can't walk away from it. The challenge. It's something different every day. It's Mother Nature--that's what you're fighting. You're taking the coal from it. It was put there millions of years ago, and it wants to stay there." Fogle is a barrel-chested man with a substantial belly, a frequent high-pitched laugh and the easy authority of someone who has directed tough men for years under difficult conditions. The doctors got his heart rate under...