It is estimated that around 1/5 of people living around a coal ash lake has gotten cancer. Thankfully there are no such number for people living near nuclear plants, or around sites of nuclear waste disposal. The amount of people who has died to radiation thanks to coal vastly outnumber the amount of people who has died to nuclear waste. If we including mining, coal mining is a symbol of one of the most dangerous job a person could do, and it has harvested many more souls than uranium mining.

Coal ash is nasty stuff, but that's very likely due to chemical toxicity (things like arsenic, especially in Appalachian coal), not radioactivity.

BTW, your chance of dying from cancer in your lifetime is about 20%, so I'm not sure that the 1/5 figure you gave there means anything.

I don't think they were saying that the radioactivity is causing the cancer in those 1/5 people. I read it as two separate points: coal plants simultaneously emit more radiation than nuclear plants, and coal plants cause more cancer via the other chemicals and rare earth elements they emit.

Yes. one of those other chemicals is arsenic which has a tendency to end up in peoples drinking water.

There is a place in the US that has a rather peculiar name of Cancer Alley. It is not a nuclear testing area, nuclear waste deposit area or area for nuclear plants. It is an area know for its petrochemical plants. It illustrate quite well the difference of nuclear waste that people are scared of, and fossil fuel waste that people accept as just normal part of life.

Spent fuel rods are a much safer destination for radioactive material, much better than particulate matter released into the atmosphere.