The planning inquiry starts today. The Secretary of State has asked that the issues raised by climate focussed campaigns be reflected in the Inquiry. The narrow focus on Climate/Steel/Jobs is myopic and ignores the elephant in the room. Without the intervention of Radiation Free Lakeland and our Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole campaign back in 2017 which gave the space for NGOs to get involved there is no doubt that West Cumbria Mining would be cuttting coal right now.
It is very painful today to see the most visceral reasons why we stepped up to oppose this mine dismissed and ignored. This is in direct contrast to the furore (quite rightly) over the seismic risks of fracking. Coal mining is a far bigger catalyst for seismicity, and this coal mine WILL INDUCE SEISMICITY within the area of the riskiest nuclear waste site in the world and yet this issue has been comprehensively ignored. Maybe because of the huge vested interests literally on the Fault Line that runs from Whitehaven to Morecambe Bay. Sellafield sits in the middle.
At the 2019 Conference on Earthquake Risk and Engineering Towards a Resilient World. The authors of the paper INDUCED SEISMICITY IN THE UK IS COMMONPLACE! warn that “Mining induced seismicity is likely to occur at the new Cumbria, deep coal mine, to be opened in 2019/2020 with coal cutting planned for 2021.” (our legal challenge with Leigh Day stopped this!) and also “No mining induced events have been reported by BGS since the last mine closed at Kellingley, Yorkshire, on 20 December 2015, except for one in Mansfield, Notts. in June 2016. However, the first new, deep-level coal mine in the UK, for 30 years, has planning permission from Cumbria County Council – induced seismicity is likely.”
From: Structural evolution of the Lake District Boundary Fault Zone in west Cumbria, UK. M.C AKHURST1, R.R BARNES1, R.A. CHADWICK2, D. MILLWARD1, M.G. NORTON3, R.H. MADDOCK4 , G.S. KlMBELL2 and A.E. MlLODOWSKI2
At the 2019 Conference on Earthquake Risk and Engineering Towards a Resilient World. The authors of the paper INDUCED SEISMICITY IN THE UK IS COMMONPLACE! warn that “Mining induced seismicity is likely to occur at the new Cumbria, deep coal mine, to be opened in 2019/2020 with coal cutting planned for 2021.” (our legal challenge with Leigh Day stopped this!) and also “No mining induced events have been reported by BGS since the last mine closed at Kellingley, Yorkshire, on 20 December 2015, except for one in Mansfield, Notts. in June 2016. However, the first new, deep-level coal mine in the UK, for 30 years, has planning permission from Cumbria County Council – induced seismicity is likely.”
“The key event for the Lake District is the earthquake that occurred on 11 August 1786; this had a magnitude of 5.0 ML, making it the largest Northern England event with the possible exception of the poorly-understood 26 February 1575 earthquake. The epicentre was offshore from Whitehaven, and is sufficiently close to the major Lake District Boundary Fault (LDBF) that marks the western edge of the Lake District to raise questions as to whether the LDBF can be considered “active”. “
Another “extreme case is the 15 February 1865 earthquake (Musson 1998c); this event can be accurately located close to the village of Rampside, just east of Barrow-in-Furness. This village was heavily damaged, with liquefaction effects (sand fountains) in the saturated sands on the foreshore. Yet 10 km away the earthquake was hardly perceptible. This illustrates the difficulty of determining earthquake magnitude from maximum intensity. The Barrow earthquake had a epicentral intensity of 8 EMS; so using maximum intensity as an analogue of magnitude would class this event as one of the largest British earthquakes; yet when the magnitude is calculated from felt area, it is less than 3 ML.” BRITISH EARTHQUAKES. R.M.W. Musson
British Geological Survey
To Ignore this elephant in the room is to be living in a parallel universe where coal mining does not induce seismicity and the riskiest nuclear waste site in the World does not sit on top of the same fault line as the coal mine. The government are only too happy for these inconvenient truths to be ignored and dismissed after all they need the wriggle room to approve this coal mine and embed deep mining infrastructure in the UK for the “biggest environmental project in the UK” – a deep nuclear dump. The coal mine boss is employed by government to deliver one or more deep nuclear dumps – if this coal mine goes ahead and does what it says on the tin – induce seismicity – the government may not need to bother with what to do with the waste at Sellafield.
notes: Abstract: Since the UK-wide seismic monitoring network was developed by BGS in the 1970s and 80s, small earthquakes in coalfields, where deep mining was taking place, were shown to be caused by the mining activity. Many of these mining induced events were felt by the Public. …10 Sept 2019
INDUCED SEISMICITY IN THE UK IS COMMONPLACE!
Anthropogenic earthquakes in the UK: A national baseline …https://www.sciencedirect.com › science › article › piiby MP Wilson · 2015 · Cited by 48 — A common misconception is that small magnitude earthquakes (e.g. ML ∼2.0) cannot be felt.
Will the Lake District Suffer Aftershocks https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/22/lake-district-earthquake-aftershocks
Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole 