[silexia]

Who really killed nuclear power? I bet if you traced all the financial donations to all the environmental groups and people who have opposed nuclear power, you will find a lot of oil dictatorships and oil companies.

Follow the money...

[karaterobot]

This is discussed in the article.

>Instead of reexamining their energy vision, the greens have committed themselves to promoting energy poverty. In part, they’ve stayed the course because doing so has made them lots of money. The Environmental Defense Fund and the NRDC have a combined budget of nearly $384 million, for example... A recent study found that “tax-motivated investors in today’s renewable energy deals are typically a highly restricted set of the US’s largest banks, insurance companies, and financial institutions” who “have been joined more recently by a handful of giant corporations like Google and Amazon.” Those who reap the rewards of the tax breaks are also some of the biggest donors to climate change causes that back renewables-only policies.

[RappingBoomer]

no. I don't think that is what he is talking about...I was a young nuclear reactor operator for the navy back in the seventies, and I was there to witness the massive propaganda campaign that effectively killed off nuclear power...granted, that campaign used as ammo all those old nuclear scare movies from the fifties, back when the MIC scared the population regarding the Soviet 'menace' so as to manufacture consent for spending more money on the military, but even so, something new was definitely going on...there was some force behind the anti nuclear movement in the seventies, almost certainly fossil fuels industry...

[pfdietz]

"There were propaganda campaigns" and "nuclear died off" doesn't mean the former caused the latter. Classic correlation/causation fallacy.

Just as a predator is more successful against a dying prey animal, so are activist groups more successful against an industry that is suffering from grave self-induced problems. Nuclear would be in fine shape today, activists or not, if there were money to be made, as there would be if it really were competitive.

[tomfunk]

iirc that's one of Michael Shellenberger's points in Apocalypse Never.

i feel like he has a specific agenda so it's hard to take everything he says at face value but that point seems reasonable.

[Symmetry]

As regulated utilities the operators of nuclear power plants sold electricity to the grid on a cost plus basis. The larger their costs, the more their profit. So a lot of it was these operators rather than oil companies pushing for ALARA standards. Normally regulators would prevent huge, useless expenditures on their parts but now they weren't able to.

[pfdietz]

Implicit in that paranoia is the assumption that environmental groups are what stopped nuclear. But that's really just a dubious right wing talking point. Nuclear appears to have shot itself in the foot all on its own.

[pyuser583]

Environmental groups fought it tooth and nail.

[pfdietz]

So what? That doesn't show they actually affected anything.

[chickenchicken]

Thanks for your service.