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by pydry 1111 days ago
I'm pretty sure the PR campaign in the US comes from the nuclear military industrial complex (which relies on civilian nuclear power) combined with the nuclear industry itself.

They know the economics are horrendous. They need to manufacture consent from the public for lavish subsidies to compete with unsubsidized solar/wind/storage solutions.

Hence the "nuclear is the green jesus" tiktok videos and the disingenuous but endlessly repeated talking points, e.g.

* "what about when the sun isnt shining?"

* pumped storage geography is scarce

* lithium will run out soon

1 comments

I'd be curious to know how the points about pumped storage and more generally the lack of effort in solving grid-level storage issues are disingenuous.

To date, the rebuttal to these points has been weak, and there is little investment in solving them, compared to investment in renewable production.

> to compete with unsubsidized solar/wind/storage solutions.

In Europe, there is no electricity production that isn't subsidized. That's pretty justified, since energy is the lifeblood of a modern society, and energy sectors can't be allowed to fail. I don't know as much about the US, but it seems to be the same [1].

To claim that any actor in this sector is not subsidized just shows that you don't understand the way electricity is funded.

[1]: https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/policies-and-regulat...

>To date, the rebuttal to these points has been weak,

About once a week I have to post a link to the scientific study that demonstrated that the geography for pumped storage is very plentiful.

For some reason when people complain that it's not (which happens constantly), they "heard it somewhere" or cite what is essentially pro-nuke/carbon-lobby propaganda.

i.e. another anti environmentalist meme, a highbrow version of all the "global warming is a myth" stuff.