In the wake of the recent coal mining incident that claimed at least 25 workers, many are reevaluating our energy production. If you listen to the West Virginian governor it sounds as if more regulation is the key to preventing such accidents. The regulatory optimists point out that safety improvements have brought the death toll in the US down from a hundred a year in the 1990's to thirty a year now. Surely the workers were aware of the risk, there is a long history of accidents in mining. It may be counterintuitive, but more regulation may not be what workers want. That's because of the trade off between wages and safety. This idea is discussed by Steve Landsburg from the perspective of textile factory fires.
The amount of coal mining deaths look particularly unwarranted when compared to those in the nuclear power industry. There were over seventy five deaths due to coal in the last ten years. I could only find a total of three Americans who died in Idaho in 1961 from an experimental nuclear reactor. No one died at Three Mile Island. Even the most infamous nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, only killed thirty one. If our most precious natural resource is human capital, how can we restrict the amount of nuclear power plants built, resulting in the continued mining of coal? This is important in the United States, but even more important in industrializing nations like China where coal mining is the most dangerous job in the country. Every 7.4 days there is a coal mining accident with at least ten deaths in China.
If America wants to be a leader in the world, there are few better issues than this. Allow businesses to build nuclear power plants domestically and offer to build them for industrializing nations as well.
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