/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9967110
>uranium mines are also reclaimed
Yes, most mines in general are, I mention coal mines in specific because the popular impression seems to be that they're just left as scabs on the landscape when they're abandoned, when the opposite is true. They aren't intrinsically worse than uranium mines...

>soil and water pollution by coal
It's honestly not that bad desu. Mining laws require careful monitoring of the groundwater table near mines and the restoration of proper drainage and fertility to farmland after they're done.

If you wanna talk about fly ash, yes that is definitely a problem, but one that can be addressed by relatively simple things like... lining the retention ponds to prevent leakages. The reason we don't do this already is because until recently, nobody really cared about fly ash. Now we do, and there are measures we can take to make it safer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/climate/tennessee-coal-ash-disposal-lawsuits.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Climate&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

Also as I mentioned above fly ash can be used for a ton of other stuff and there's really no need for it to just sit in retention ponds in the first place. We can use coal dust to make graphene computer chips, for instance, or even to fertilize soil (although there are risks with that proposal which still need to be ironed out)

The only places where water and soil pollution by coal plants still kill anyone in large numbers are festering garbage dumps like India and China, which we can't do anything about anyway.

>ghgs
Scrubbers. Capturing & sequestering emissions in abandoned coal mines. There's technology we can use to reduce coal emissions by a LOT. Pennsylvania, for example, just recently slashed coal emissions in half without closing a single coal fired power plant.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pennsylvania-slashed-coal-emissions-without-alienating-industry-1521633601

tl;dr coal isn't that bad, stop being an alarmist