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...