Ash from coal power plants contains uranium and thorium, carrying radiation into the environment at a much larger rate than any from a nuclear power plant

See ‘Chain Reactions’ Review: Fuel of the Nuclear Age Uranium was discovered in 1789 by Marcia Bartusiak. Ms. Bartusiak is a professor emeritus at MIT. Her books include “Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony” and “The Day We Found the Universe.” She reviewed Chain Reactions: The Hopeful History of Uranium by Lucy Jane Santos. Excerpt:

"The deaths of uranium workers from lung cancer, and the ecological damage caused by the release of heated water from nuclear plants, altered the atomic dream. It truly ended with the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, followed in 1986 by Chernobyl in the Soviet Union and in 2011 at Fukushima in Japan. As a result, nuclear power stations around the world have been shut down. Ms. Santos finds this ironic. With fossil fuels replacing the lost nuclear energy, oil spills, train derailments, coal mining and chemical-plant explosions have caused far more devastation. “Ash from coal power plants contains uranium and thorium, carrying radiation into the environment at a much larger rate than any from a nuclear power plant,” asserts Ms. Santos.

Given the crucial need to reduce carbon emissions and to maintain grid stability as wind and solar come online, Ms. Santos would like to see the nuclear industry increase its capacity. “It’s important to remember that, despite those high-profile incidents,” she writes, “nuclear’s safety record over the last seven decades (18,000 reactor years) is comparable with solar and wind.” She mentions, all too briefly, that new reactor designs could help initiate this nuclear resurgence."