Because it got cheaper than natural gas.

Nobody thinks it's clean, they just don't care.

There are concerns outside of the list you wrote. For example:

• people need energy and coal is a source of energy

Again? Did we stop?

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned metallurgical coal yet. Even if you don't burn it for energy, the carbon in steel has to come from somewhere and that's usually coke, which is coal that has been further pyrolised into a fairly pure carbon producing a byproduct of coal tar.

Why "going back to it" have we ever stopped?

Climate change 'looming'? Dude, it's already here.

Because of the war against nuclear plants. Our green party shut down nuclear plants in favor for renewable energy. But as predicted, renewables don't meet our demands. So the green party started building gas plants to compensate instead of keeping nuclear running.

So why? Because of green idiocracry that demand the impossible of green energy (at this moment) and nuclear = evil

I blame the release of both Factorio and Victoria 3.

When did they stop?

It's a cheap, non intermittent, easily scalable, and highly available source of energy compatible with existing infrastructure. When the choice becomes rolling electricity blackouts/shutting down factories, or coal powered electricity due to extremely poor planning for the future, coal will win every time. I wish we just started getting renewables running decades ago. Most of the limited electricity in South Africa is produced from coal power plants or diesel generators.

I'm typing this during a rolling electricity blackout. Really not looking forward to my cold shower in the next few minutes

Yes, countries like Germany are turning to coal as a direct result of nuclear-phobia.

The US, with all its green initiatives and solar/wind incentives, is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US has been the top oil producer on whole the planet for the last 5-6 years. The problem is getting worse.

Obligatory: we didn't stop.

There's also good reasons to have a fistful of generation plants with coal or natural gas.

To put it simply, nuclear is clean, far cleaner than just about anything else we have. If you compare the waste product with the energy produced... It's just not an argument that nuclear loses versus something like coal. Where coal puts out its waste mainly in the form of smoke, nuclear waste, like discarded nuclear power rods, are a physical and far more immediately dangerous thing. The coal waste kind of blends in, and lobbyists have been throwing around "clean coal" for a while... Although coal use has gotten a lot more efficient and produces less waste than before, it's still far more than what nuclear could do. "Clean" coal is a myth, it's just "less bad" coal, with good marketing.

Regardless, coal and natural gas fired plants can ramp up and down far quicker than nuclear possibly could. Where nuclear covers base demand and can usually scale up and down a bit to help with higher load times, to cover peak demand, coal and natural gas can fire up and produce power in a matter of minutes. With nuclear, they have to ramp up slowly to ensure the reaction doesn't run away from them, and to ensure all the safety measures and safeguards are working as intended as the load increases. It's just a fat more careful process.

The grid is hugely complex, and I'm simplifying significantly. But from the best of my understanding, nuclear can't react fast enough to cover spontaneous demand. So either coal or natural gas needs to exist for the grid to work as well as it does.

Wind is unpredictable and solar usually isn't helping during the hours where the grid would need help with the demand. The only viable option is with grid scale energy storage, which can hold the loads while the nuclear systems have a chance to ramp up.

There's still far more coal fired plants in the world than we need for this task alone, so there's still work to be done... But I suspect coal use will diminish, but not be eliminated from grid scale operation for a while.

Because renewable energy and nuclear energy require significant capital investment, which the private sector and governments in the age of 'fiscal discipline' are not willing to make.

Ukraine war plays a big part of it

In my country, because of a decades long fearmongering and disinfomation campaing that destoyed the nuclear energy industry. So now we're stucked with coal to keep the power running at night and during winter.

Tf you mean stopped

• a German

People will do everything that givesthem an advantage in anykind of way. If coal is an affordable resource to fulfill a need it will be mined and put to use.

You may change the view on a thing for a few persons, but never of all of them.