Wyoming has a HUGE open pit coal mine and Colorado has a huge coal fired power plant near Pueblo. The Commanche Power Plant was built when I was at the University in the mid '70s. The power plant consumes coal -- LOTS OF IT! They expanded it so its now more than double the original size.
Trains have been running to the Commanche Power station since 1976
There are a minimum of 8 trains of coal each day to the power plant. Often 12 or more.
Each Train has between 100 and 125 cars of coal
Each car holds between 286,000 - 315,000 pounds of coal
Based on only the minimums,
38 Years = 13870 days
8 trains x 100 cars x 13870 days yields 11,096,000 cars of coal
11,096,000 cars x 286,000 lbs per car = 3,173,456,000,000 Pounds of coal
One could assume that 3.17 trillion pounds of coal have been burned at just one facility
That's 1,586,728,000 tons!
Now there's 45 cu ft per ton for hard coal
So Commanche has consumed 71,402,760,000 cu ft of coal
Now just one more additional fact. That same mine in Wyoming is also sending about the same amount of coal to Utah and other states. The hole above is just to keep one power plant running. Wyoming is powering many other plants around the country. The rails near here going south run an average of 28 trains a day!!!
Some day I'm going to head up there because I want to see the hole that has produced over 71 Billion cubic feet of coal just for Colorado. It's probably over a trillion cubic feet.
That's one heck of a big hole!
