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Comment by kaon123 | Hacker News Reader

Actually Switzerland released a Study today that they can cover the entire electricity demand in the country by building 3000 additional windmills. So maybe the nuclear power plants aren't needed after all. But of course, what will actually happen is that the power plants will be closed while the windmills are on the bureaucratic drawing table.

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Yeah sure, but I much rather have 1 nuclear plant then 3000 additional windmills.

Nuclear is more reliable, cleaner, less deadly and much better to look at.

When you say "less deadly" in regards to nuclear compared to windmills, you mean "less deadly for birds", right?

Not that it diminishes your point, being less deadly for birds is a legitimate factor. I am just curious if you omitted the "for birds" part or if windmills are deadly for humans in some way as well.

No I mean humans. I mean neither is very deadly but I believe far more people would die constructing and reconstructing 3000 giant towers rather then having a single GenIV nuclear plant running for the next 60 years.

There are other reasons as well.

Ah, it is constructions related. I didn't even think about that at all, I assumed construction was pretty much casualty-free at this point.

Good point, thanks for bringing it up. I was legitimately confused how windmills manage to result in operational deaths, with the construction never even entering my mind.

The number of deaths per terrawatt-hour is 0.04 for Wind vs 0.03 for Nuclear (compared to 25 for coal and 2.4 for natural gas). The figure for nuclear includes deaths resulting from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, which distorts the numbers. The death rate for nuclear during normal operation (which is how wind, coal, and gas are measured) is vanishingly small.

Not sure how to count but most of the death in Fukushima were because of unnecessary actions by the government that resulted in far more problems then the radiation itself.

Chernobyl I think shouldn't even be counted, its such a different technology stack.

Neither is very deadly. I would just really like to see a nice modern nuclear plant.

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