That escalated quickly WTH, just before it was 8 killed
ArgentineBeauty on
Coal mining accidents always feel especially grim because you know how terrifying those last moments must be underground. China has improved safety standards a lot compared to decades ago, but stories like this still happen way too often in heavy industry. Hope they manage to get the remaining workers out alive.
flybydenver on
So sad, and unnecessary. This doesn’t happen with renewable energy.
locri on
That’s my reminder that coal kills more people than nuclear by a wire margin
plausden on
is this for rare earth minerals?
NeeAnderTall on
I remember reading a BBC article about a gas explosion in a Chinese mine killing many. The very next sentence was, “China’s booming economy….”, 😂
Salty-Limit411 on
Just for context on why a country that installs more solar than anyone else on earth is still seeing 80 people die in coal blasts.
Shanxi province is basically China’s industrial backbone, has been for decades. And yeah, Beijing is breaking renewable records on one hand while the manufacturing sector and base-load grid are still overwhelmingly running on coal on the other. That tension is real and it doesn’t resolve overnight. Worth noting this is being called one of the deadliest mining incidents in China in over a decade, which says a lot given how many of these have happened.
The accidents themselves aren’t just a “poor safety standards” story either. What usually happens is demand spikes, provincial officials get handed aggressive output quotas from above, and local operators start quietly cutting corners on methane ventilation and gas monitoring because the pressure to hit numbers beats the pressure to be careful. The carbon monoxide levels reportedly exceeded limits before this blast, which suggests the warning signs were there. Federal regs have genuinely improved since the nightmare years of the early 2000s but that top-down quota culture has a way of making safety the first thing that slips.
Until the grid actually transitions, the human cost of keeping the factory of the world running is mostly paid underground. That part hasn’t changed much.
7 Comments
That escalated quickly WTH, just before it was 8 killed
Coal mining accidents always feel especially grim because you know how terrifying those last moments must be underground. China has improved safety standards a lot compared to decades ago, but stories like this still happen way too often in heavy industry. Hope they manage to get the remaining workers out alive.
So sad, and unnecessary. This doesn’t happen with renewable energy.
That’s my reminder that coal kills more people than nuclear by a wire margin
is this for rare earth minerals?
I remember reading a BBC article about a gas explosion in a Chinese mine killing many. The very next sentence was, “China’s booming economy….”, 😂
Just for context on why a country that installs more solar than anyone else on earth is still seeing 80 people die in coal blasts.
Shanxi province is basically China’s industrial backbone, has been for decades. And yeah, Beijing is breaking renewable records on one hand while the manufacturing sector and base-load grid are still overwhelmingly running on coal on the other. That tension is real and it doesn’t resolve overnight. Worth noting this is being called one of the deadliest mining incidents in China in over a decade, which says a lot given how many of these have happened.
The accidents themselves aren’t just a “poor safety standards” story either. What usually happens is demand spikes, provincial officials get handed aggressive output quotas from above, and local operators start quietly cutting corners on methane ventilation and gas monitoring because the pressure to hit numbers beats the pressure to be careful. The carbon monoxide levels reportedly exceeded limits before this blast, which suggests the warning signs were there. Federal regs have genuinely improved since the nightmare years of the early 2000s but that top-down quota culture has a way of making safety the first thing that slips.
Until the grid actually transitions, the human cost of keeping the factory of the world running is mostly paid underground. That part hasn’t changed much.