Reply #142: It depends on where the sample is taken: Uranium in coal varies from 1 to 10 ppm

[txlibdem]

"Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally, the amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than the amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively."
... http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

And from the same source:
"The concentration of fissionable uranium-235 (the current fuel for nuclear power plants) has been established to be 0.71% of uranium content."

Isn't this the same source you quoted to say that coal is so safe we should be bathing in it??? It says that in some parts of the US, coal contains 10 ppm of uranium and, therefore, 25 ppm of Thorium. That figure then would include .071 ppm of fissile Uranium-235.

That doesn't sound all that bad. 0.071 parts per million is all. What a wimp you must be if you can't roll around in an ash pit with 0.071 parts per million of nuclear reactor fuel, Uranium-235 in it.

It all depends on where you live or, more accurately, where your local coal power plant gets its coal from. There is a chance that you could be deluged with 10 times the "average" amount of Nuclear Reactor Fuel that floats freely out the smoke stack of the coal power plant or is stored in open pits and ponds for the wind to pick up and toss into the air.

If a nearby nuclear reactor announced that it was pulverizing its reactor fuel and letting out 11,371 pounds of uranium-235 (more than 5 tons) into the air in the form of tiny particles that could float on the winds and land anywhere downwind (wherever the wind might be blowing that day)... you'd be picketing outside that nuclear power plant within two seconds! Why does coal get a free pass for doing just that???

*note: U-235 data from the same source as above, data from the year 1982 only.

/edit to correct this sentence: Estimated cumulative Uranium-235 release in the US alone from 1937 to the year 2040: "1031 tons of uranium-235"