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Why has the world started to mine coal again? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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

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[โ€“] 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Real talk, why can't we just launch that shit into the sun? Obviously, I understand the risk of a rocket filled with spent fuel rods exploding is low Earth orbit and the weight to cost ratio, but are there other reasons?

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  • [โ€“] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 2 years ago

    Basically to put something in the sun youโ€™ve got to bring it to a near-standstill relative to the sun. You have to slow it down from the speed Earth is orbiting at (2 * Pi AU/year) to almost zero. It takes a ton of rocket fuel to do that.

    That plus the danger you mentioned makes burying it the cheaper and safer option.

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