>>1486748this, people cant into stats and don't realize that a typical gigawatt-capacity coal power station burns several million tonnes of coal per year. That means every such station creates fly ash containing around 5-10 tonnes of uranium and thorium each year. Multiply that by the number of such stations worldwide and the total amount of radioactive waste produced is truly astonishing.
So according to estimates by the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world’s coal-fired power stations currently generate waste containing around 5,000 tonnes of uranium and 15,000 tonnes of thorium. Collectively, that’s over 100 times more radiation dumped into the environment than that released by nuclear power stations.
