While I agree with the basic argument that we are hurting ourselves with an irrational aversion to nuclear power, some of Thiel's arguments seem weak or overreaching. The worst, in my estimation, is this:

> Critics often point to the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union as an even more terrifying warning against nuclear power, but that accident was a direct result of both a faulty design and the operators’ incompetence. Fewer than 50 people were reported to have died at Chernobyl; by contrast, the American Lung Association estimates that smoke from coal-fired power plants kills about 13,000 people every year.

So on one hand you take the failure of a single nuclear plant, and count the direct, local deaths from that. On the other hand you take the sum of all coal-fired plants, and count the number of global, indirect deaths from them. OF COURSE the latter number is going to be bigger. The comparison is dishonest.