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Re:Activists who embrace nuclear power by pydry on Monday February 22, 2021 @08:01AM (#26223999)
>Can we all agree that we should stop subsidize existing fossil fuel infrastructure?

Yes, but that's not what this article is about.

>Can we also all agree to stop expanding capacity for more fossil fuels?

Yes, but that's not what this article is about.

>Can we then also agree to stop repairing and extending the lifetime of existing power plants that uses fossil fuels?

Yes, but that's not what this article is about.

This article is a fluff human interest story about an "environmental activist" who suddenly "saw the light" and realized that nuclear power can generate "energy at all hours unlike solar" (their words).

I'm sure the New Yorker journalist is not unaware that solar and wind are a lot cheaper than nuclear power even accounting for variability but it's barely hinted at in the article. It doesn't serve their agenda.

One thing that is mentioned is the "onerousness" of safety regulations piled on after Fukushima.

If you think this article wasn't explicitly written on behalf of the nuclear industry trying to garner some green points I've got a coal fired plant scheduled to break ground in 2024 to sell you.

If you're wondering why they'd spend money campaigning for this, well, it's because they desperately need taxpayer money to stay viable.

Re:Activists who embrace nuclear power by belorn on Monday February 22, 2021 @12:21PM (#26227178)
This conversation match pretty well the phrase "Talking past each other". Environmental activists that are also in favor of nuclear power are not interested in nuclear power for nuclear power itself. The goal is to get rid of fossil fuels, with the strategy to do so simply left open for both storage and nuclear.

Since we are in an agreement on the questions about fossil fuels then everything else are unimportant. Lets implement those things we agree on! Where I live, the government and the green party which decides on the current energy strategy has the opposite strategy. Their strategy for handing grid stability is to subsidize oil power plants and to expand the capacity to buy coal energy from nearby countries. No intention at all to allow existing power plants that uses fossil fuels to shut down. The stated goal of emission free energy grid is reached the moment where the total export of renewables over a year is higher than the import of coal.

I don't need to wonder who is desperately campaigning to get tax money. The government budget for energy subsidizing is public information. It is listed under the term of "reserve energy".

Re:Activists who embrace nuclear power by runarberg on Monday February 22, 2021 @04:39PM (#26231014)
> Environmental activists that are also in favor of nuclear power are not interested in nuclear power for nuclear power itself. The goal is to get rid of fossil fuels

And the is the point with the anti-nuclear campaign. It is to argue that nuclear is not a solution to the climate crisis (or at least a very bad option next to renewables). I would argue that environmental activists that argue for nuclear are doing the cause a disfavor. We might be in an agreement that fossil fuel is bad, and we might agree that renewables are good. But we are in disagreement about whether nuclear is good (hence we argue).

> Since we are in an agreement on the questions about fossil fuels then everything else are unimportant

Quite the contrary. Where we go from here is very important. Firstly because there is world after the climate crisis (hopefully!), and we should be careful how we build that world. Secondly it might turn out (and evidence suggest) that nuclear is not a solution the climate crisis. This is important—as GP suggests—because renewables and nuclear are competing for attention of public policy makers. My government representatives might tomorrow start making the case that we should focus more on nuclear and allocate money and time that would otherwise have been spent on renewables to the nuclear pipe dream. Worst case scenario. New nuclear power plants are build over the next decade instead of renewable infrastructure, and a decade from now we are still emitting more carbon into the atmosphere. This the nightmare we in the anti-nuclear campaign are trying to avoid.

Re:Activists who embrace nuclear power by belorn on Tuesday February 23, 2021 @07:48PM (#26245177)
It would look a bit more sincere if the anti-nuclear green party would not be the one talking warmly (in more than one sense) about using oil power plants as reserve energy and increasing the capacity for importing coal energy.

I am sure not all anti-nuclear green activists are like this, but its the reality in the here and now. This is why I started the conversation about those issues. Oil and coal is not the way forward, and since that is the proposed deal currently on the table on the renewable side then I reject it and look to someone who can offer a better deal.

I would be much more open to the anti-nuclear side if they clearly came out against the practice of using fossil fuels for grid stability and reserve.