Читать книгу The Self-Sufficiency Handbook - Alan Bridgewater - Страница 26

Coal was king back in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; every house had a couple of open coal fires and perhaps even a coal cooking range. When I was a kid in the 1950s, family life was centered around the open fire: lighting it in the morning, filling up the coal scuttle, making tea and toast, polishing the brass. Every house puffed out black smoke. But that all came to an end with the various Clean Air Acts. Now, with oil and gas costs rising, coal is once again being thought of as a viable and practical energy source.

Coal has several disadvantages for use inside the home.

ADVANTAGES

• All dangers associated with burning coal are understood; we know all about carbon monoxide emissions.

• There are no intangibles as there are with nuclear fuel.

• It is possible to turn coal into easy-to-handle fuels.

• It is now possible to burn coal cleanly.

DISADVANTAGES

• Coal is bulky, making transport and storage problems.

• Coal mining is both dirty and dangerous.

• The setup to burn coal on a domestic scale would be costly and require major efforts on the parts of governments.

• Using coal in the house, even if it is in a “smokeless” form, is both dusty and dirty.