With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.
Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?
Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.
Now I’m more depressed than when I posted this
It’s insanely more expensive than any of the other options, even the long-term storage deep down underground with further burial and complete abandonment of the location in a way that would make the location as unremarkable as possible, preventing future generations developing interest to potential markings.
Tom Scott has a great, rather concise video about that. It’s not really just ground, but rock, making it even more secure and unaffected, especially given that the waste is first sealen into special containers.
The waste is vitrified, meaning that it’s encased in what’s basically solid glass.