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Comment by steelbrain | Hacker News Reader

Not trying to pick a fight but just posting because I hear this often from my friends, re birds being happy.

The choice, if between coal-fired plants and windmills should be pretty obvious to birds. Sure we may not see them getting splashed to bits with coal-fired plants but they are silently getting ill/dying over time.

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So are people, yet we are afraid of nuclear power…

Bird death from turbines small-scale and highly predictable. Deaths from nuclear can range from zero to regional catastrophe and it's basically impossible to predict when it'll happen and how bad it'll be.

I'm not anti-nuclear, but the risk profile is SO different from wind.

The worst case is worse, but nuclear disasters are so rare and reactors produce so much power that nuclear is safer than wind in terms of deaths per TWh.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Let's stop subsidizing their accident insurance then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

> The Act required companies to obtain the maximum possible insurance coverage against accidents, determined to be $60 million

It’s a necessity, and extremely logical and reasonable.

The most recent "disaster" was Fukushima, the actual cost there is far far greater than $60 million.

The point being that they aren’t able to get private insurance higher than that, so the government has to come up with a way to help.

They’re insured the exact same way the banks are.

> the risk profile is SO different from wind.

As is the power generation profile. Wind/solar/tidal are important to develop, and the risk profile should include whatever peaker or storage backs up the variability in generation.

Because solar and wind are a fraction of the capex and opex, have none of the risk or security headaches, more easily distributed (meaning less grid infrastructure) and don't generate nuclear waste.

People tend to be afraid of things that can blow up and make the surrounding area uninhabitable.

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