Energy
We drove through rural Wyoming (as if there's any other type) and back into Nebraska along a route that paralleled one of the main Union Pacific rail lines. These routes carry nothing but coal, constant coal from giant mines in the Powder River basin of Wyoming to power plants all across the east. I didn't count just how many trains we saw this day or the next, or how many coal cars these trains pulled. If you look on Google Earth at the current picture taken around Keeline, Wyoming, you'll see a train 8,300 feet long pulling more than 160 cars. A book I have on this phenomenon published in 2006 says that at that time, 65 trains left the Powder River headed east every day. We didn't go more than 15 minutes without seeing a full train headed out or an empty one coming back.
Think about that. A coal car holds about 120 tons of coal. A 160-car train would carry 19200 tons of coal. Sixty-five of those trains would take 1.2 million tons of coal out of Wyoming every day. That's 1.13 billion kilograms. The internet suggests broken bituminous coal has a density of 833 kg per cubic meter. Do math, and this works out to a cube of Wyoming 363 feet on a side carried east every day. Over the course of a year, that cube grows to about 2,600 feet on a side, the size of a respectable mountain, all so that power plants can change it into Facebook. That's what it takes to keep us going.
Energy
We drove through rural Wyoming (as if there's any other type) and back into Nebraska along a route that paralleled one of the main Union Pacific rail lines. These routes carry nothing but coal, constant coal from giant mines in the Powder River basin of Wyoming to power plants all across the east. I didn't count just how many trains we saw this day or the next, or how many coal cars these trains pulled. If you look on Google Earth at the current picture taken around Keeline, Wyoming, you'll see a train 8,300 feet long pulling more than 160 cars. A book I have on this phenomenon published in 2006 says that at that time, 65 trains left the Powder River headed east every day. We didn't go more than 15 minutes without seeing a full train headed out or an empty one coming back.
Think about that. A coal car holds about 120 tons of coal. A 160-car train would carry 19200 tons of coal. Sixty-five of those trains would take 1.2 million tons of coal out of Wyoming every day. That's 1.13 billion kilograms. The internet suggests broken bituminous coal has a density of 833 kg per cubic meter. Do math, and this works out to a cube of Wyoming 363 feet on a side carried east every day. Over the course of a year, that cube grows to about 2,600 feet on a side, the size of a respectable mountain, all so that power plants can change it into Facebook. That's what it takes to keep us going.