The West Virginia coal mine accident is a terrible tragedy, but for those of us not directly touched by the loss of life it might not be insensitive to reflect on a statistic:
The number of workers known to have died in the West Virginia coal mine tragedy is now at 25.
The average number of coal mine deaths per year since 2000 is 30.
The number of people known to have died in the U.S. as a result of accidents in the 40 year history of electricity generated by nuclear power is 0.
And yet we refuse to build more nuclear power plants because we're afraid that nuclear power will pose a hazard to people, both the plants themselves and the storage of the waste. Yet we continue to mine coal even though we know that coal poses a hazard, both to those who mine it and to the environment into which the combustion products are dumped.
As if this weren't inscrutable enough, President Obama wants to solve the problems coal poses to human safety and the environment by simply eliminating both coal and nuclear power as a source of energy. How we will light our homes once he has ushered in the golden age of a nuclear-free and fossil fuel-free world he hasn't yet explained to us, but we can be sure that he knows what he's doing.
RLC