Coal dust, sans radioactive stuff, and coal burning emissions also exact a terrible toll on respiratory health. A lot of people have died, or had much worse lives, thanks to the widespread use of coal.

Don’t leave out the coal miners. The history of oppressive companies, grueling work conditions, constant possibility of death through any number of horrible circumstances, and the lifelong damage of unprotected mining on the lungs has harmed generations of families should never be forgotten.

Meanwhile as a population they’re voting for people who want more coal mining. They are 6 figure jobs in a depressed economic area.

And yet, what if that labor went into nuclear construction instead? How many 6 figure construction jobs is many multi-billion $ nuclear plants?

What percent of coal miners do you think could make that transition?

Most of them; deisel mechanics, electricians, explosives techs, train drivers, riggers, machine operators, etc.

What, tell me you don't think coal miners have pick axes and chip coal out of tunnel walls into sacks.

Coal miners are human too, they can adapt, people can pick up new skills.

It seems like you're implying that many of them cannot make the transition. Why do you think they cannot?

Well for one there have been gov efforts before under Obama but it didn’t result in a big shift (for whatever reason). But also I think it’s very elitist and with a lot of hubris to suggest an entire population should easily be able to shift from one thing they’ve done for decades with all of the structural support in a community of it, to something else. Most people are not so fluid, both in capability but also receptive to change. Throughout history change gets resisted.

Coal contains no significant radioactive carbon. All the radioisotopes of carbon have half life many orders of magnitude smaller than the age of coal deposits.

Coal contains other radioactive elements, though. However, the quantity of these is still usually less than the quantity that needs to be mined to power a light water reactor.

The quantity of radioactivity mined is of little relevance. It's the quantity of radioactivity emitted to the environment that matters.

Yes but the nuclear fuel is carefully contained during and after use. Not so much for coal.

The decay products of uranium are not well contained at uranium mines. They are in massive tailing piles, just as the radioactive elements in coal end up in ash.

Less gets said about these mine-related radioactive elements because they are typically in other countries, often countries where the people have darker skins.

Yes the radioactive decay products of the naturally occurring ore already in the ground naturally are still in the tailings. But they were there already before. With the removal of the uranium the net radioactive material left would be lower the the initial levels though no?

The daughter products will eventually decay away, but it will take a very long time. In particular, radium has a half life of 1600 years.

In any case, these are exactly the same daughters as from the decay of uranium in coal, so the argument you are making there is equivalent to an argument that could be made about coal ash.

but in coal they are burning those decay products and putting them into the air to spread around not so with the uranium ore where those decay products go back to the same ground they were dug out of

Almost all the radioactive elements in coal go into ash, which is not emitted into the air. Do you have some vision of old coal plants where emissions were not controlled?

Well that depends. 57% of the world's uranium is mined with in situ leaching:

> In situ leaching (ISL), also known as solution mining, or in situ recovery (ISR) in North America, involves leaving the ore where it is in the ground, and recovering the minerals from it by dissolving them and pumping the pregnant solution to the surface where the minerals can be recovered. Consequently there is little surface disturbance and no tailings or waste rock generated.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

Over 82% of uranium production is outside of Africa, in countries like Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, and Russia...

The point has always been that coal dumps far more radioative substance out to the environment that nuclear ever has, to tamp down illogical radiation scare information about nuclear power.

And the point I make is that if you don't give uranium mining a free pass, then with current thermal reactors your statement is false.

I'm being a bit pedantic here, but it's the heavy metals contained inside of coal - cadmium, uranium, thorium - that are the main pollution concerns, not the carbon from the coal itself. Coal is definitely one of the dirtiest fuels, though, besides biomass.

How many people have died in coal mines, had black lung, died from coal pollution etc. It's really no comparison. People are just flat out afraid radioactivity from nuclear because of movies and bad information campaigns. It -is- scary, invisible, can give you a death sentence in moment if you get a LOT of the right kind. I think human civilization dying out is a alot scarier to me.