0:04 man has used coal as a fuel for over
0:07 3000 years and it remains one of the
0:11 world's most vital natural resources
0:13 generates more than 40 percent of the
0:16 world's electricity and every year we go
0:18 through six billion tons
0:21 somehow minds must ensure a constant
0:23 Supply or our cities would be plunged
0:26 Into Darkness and industries would grind
0:36 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
0:39 this industrial east coast city is
0:41 famous for steel production and shipbuilding
0:43 shipbuilding
0:45 but Pittsburgh is also surrounded by
0:48 Rich coal reserves
0:51 and here just 30 miles from the city are
0:54 the bayley and Enloe Fork mines
0:57 this is the largest underground mining
0:59 complex in North America
1:01 and every year it produces more than 20
1:04 million tons of coal
1:06 there are millions of dollars invested
1:09 in this vast complex and with more than
1:11 200 men working underground at any one
1:13 time keeping it running is a major
1:23 at four in the afternoon the day shift
1:25 clocks off after eight hours of hard
1:27 work while the next shift makes its way
1:30 into one of the lift cages to begin the
1:33 650-foot descent into the mine
1:35 mining is one of the toughest jobs
1:38 imaginable and there's an unspoken bond
1:40 between these men who spend every
1:45 once they arrive at the bottom of the
1:47 shaft they still face a long journey to
1:54 after almost 20 years of continuous
1:56 mining a vast network of underground
1:59 tunnels now extends for an extraordinary
2:02 35 square miles the miners face a
2:04 five-mile journey to get to the section
2:10 it's a cramped and uncomfortable ride
2:13 aboard one of the mine's small trains as
2:14 the cars rattle their way through the
2:17 Maze of dark tunnels following a network
2:19 of rails that are now so busy they
2:27 first up is a monster machine known as a
2:29 continuous Miner
2:32 armed with a 16-foot cutting drum This
2:35 ferocious beast Chomps away at the seam
2:42 as it bores its way forward it feeds the
2:44 coal behind it to a crab-like loader and
2:50 The Continuous Miner produces up to five
2:53 tons of coal every minute more than a
2:55 minor in the 1920s produced in a whole day
2:56 day
2:59 but its job is actually to prepare the
3:01 way for the real monster the long wall Shearer
3:07 armed with a set of teeth to put a
3:09 tyrannosaurus to shame its Cutting Edge
3:12 is over one thousand feet long and it
3:15 can smash an amazing 50 tons of coal out
3:17 of the seam every minute
3:20 think about it that's almost one ton of
3:23 coal every second enough to meet all the
3:25 energy needs of an average household for
3:32 but there are three million tons of coal
3:34 in this 13 foot high seam
3:37 despite its ferocious appetite it will
3:40 still take six months of shuttling back
3:42 and forth before it has finished digging
3:48 before the coal is fit for shipping they
3:50 first need to remove Rock soil and
3:52 contaminants which account for up to 30
3:59 so the material is fed via conveyor into
4:01 the processing plant
4:04 ensure it's all properly processed it's
4:06 first graded according to size
4:09 next to separate the coal from the waste
4:11 rock it's fed into this giant flotation tank
4:18 because the rock is heavier than the
4:20 coal it sinks to the bottom where it can
4:22 be removed while the coal floats to the surface
4:28 it's now soaking wet so just like your
4:31 home laundry they load it into a spin dryer
4:38 this industrial dryer spins the coal at
4:43 high speed until excess water is removed
4:45 this water is then fed into vast tanks
4:47 where the contaminants are removed
4:56 meanwhile the different sized pieces of
4:59 coal are recombined crushed into a
5:06 incredibly just 15 minutes after
5:08 entering the plant it's ready for
5:11 transport by rail
5:13 as they Park beneath the hopper a
5:15 controller opens a chute to allow six
5:18 tons of coal to fill each car
5:21 once full every train is able to
5:23 transport over ten thousand tons of coal
5:30 to some extraordinary cold crunching
5:33 machines and the guys who labor 24 7 to
5:35 keep them working this essential
5:37 resource keeps flowing to the world's
5:39 power stations and there's enough
5:41 electricity to power the wheels of the
