That is the point of the National Coal Mining Museum in Overton, about 13 miles south-west of Knottingley, on the site of the former Capstone colliery.

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Advocates of federal regulation point to the case of coal mining, which Congress regulates based on its national importance.

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With respect to clean coal technology, it is not possible at this point to completely eliminate coal from the menu of our energy options.

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Owned by the North Queensland Bulk Ports Corporation, Abbot Point has a deepwater coal terminal capable of handling 50 million tons annually.

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What it does have (and must have, as a starting point for the diamonds) is lots of coal: dirty, high-sulfur-content coal, which feeds 75% of the country's primary energy requirements.

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The concept of heating underground coal to a combustion point may lead one to recall Centralia, PA, an abandoned town in Pennsylvania sitting on a coal seam which has been burning for 50 years, but the UCG controlled process makes that outcome highly unlikely.

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But coal advocates point to high-tech operations such as the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, north of Pittsburgh.

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That coal mining has been memorialised in a folk museum is itself a sign of creeping irrelevance, a point the museum acknowledges, perhaps accidentally.

ECONOMIST: Coal