Lets say that you need to mine, say 2,715,384x the amount of coal to produce the same amount of energy as you would uranium. (From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_densit...).
Now if mining uranium is less then 2,000,000x more dangerous as mining coal, then per unit of energy generated it is actually safer.
Hence yes, I do think that coal mining is more dangerous then uranium mining, per unit of energy generated.
How much percent of Uranium is in ore? How fast is that going down in the next century?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_debate
Ever wondered why Europe has coal mines but closed all uranium mines? Just for fun?
Uranium mines now happen to be in remote areas or developing countries.
Uranium mines are a cluster fuck of all kinds of environmental problems.
Germany closed one. It cost billions to contain the damage.
France with 50 reactors doesn't have a Uranium mine. They exploit poor countries like Niger and leave an environmental catastrophe there. Uranium mining is the largest business in Niger and the life expectations is not much about 50 years there. If nuclear mining would be so great and people would make a lot of money from mining, this should be much higher.
Obviously it is not the case.
To begin: * Uranite (U3O8) is a major ore of uranium https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Uraninite and is in fact mostly uranium by weight. * "Uranium mining is the largest business in Niger and the life expectations is not much about 50 years there." Is an example of 'correlation does not imply causation'. To give you an example, the number of pirates have gone down over the last few hundred years. Global temperatures have gone up over the last few hundred years. From that information alone you cannot say that the lack of pirates causes global warming.
* I'd also mention here that there are large amounts of diamonds sourced from africa. A trade that is very profitable, yet leaves the people themselves with very little money nor increased standard of living.
* From the wikipedia article you specified: "Because uranium ore emits radon gas, uranium mining can be more dangerous than other underground mining, unless adequate ventilation systems are installed.". Assuming these safeguards are met, I fail to see how it would be 2,000,000 times as dangerous as coal mining.
I will, however, correct my previous statement. -Natural uranium has an energy density of 443,000MJ/kg -Coal has an energy density of 32.5MJ/kg.
Hence to produce the same amount of energy as you can produce using one KG of natural uranium you require 13630kg of coal.
Assuming the risk of coal mining is measured in a certain number of fatalities per kilogram mined (equivalent to a certain m^3 mined, given a constant density of the mined material) is R_C and R_U for coal and uranium respectively then the expected number of fatalities per "1kg of uranium equivalent energy" is then R_U and 13630R_C.
As such for coal to be "safer" 13630R_C needs to be < R_U, a statement I consider unlikely.
Fact is, here in Germany we have been mining for coal for decades. It has a lot of negative impacts on nature. It is still going on. But it is slowly phased out against political opposition.
Uranium mining OTOH has been phased out already. Uranium mining has such severe negative effects on the nature that in Germany it is closed with huge monetary investments.
You can read about the closing of the Wismut mine here: http://www.wise-uranium.org/uwis.html
Mining for Uranium is now going on in remote areas or in states with the political structure for it.
At the end of the day, that specifically is what we are trying to find out.
I found already out that all Uranium mines here in Western Europe have been closed, mostly because of environmental issues and because they are not economical.
I can see every day that millions of people live near coal plants and coal mines - here in Germany. There is is a large movement to shut down coal plants and end coal mining. But that movement still has some miles to go.
These are facts.
Your calculations based on energy density are useless. Nobody wants to live near a Uranium mine contaminating ground water. No matter how much energy Uranium provides. In more densely populated areas like Europe this is hopeless.
The existing Uranium mines are almost all located in areas where not the consumers of nuclear electricity live.
See: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html