Thank you for outing the author.

> power plant workers fleeing

That is an argument for no power plants with workers anywhere.

In WW2 dams were attacked causing lots of damage. I haven't seen anyone using that as an argument that we should demolish all hydro dams lest they become targets in a future war. Strangely this kind of thinking only applies to nuclear power.

You may find this bit of history interesting: https://www.rferl.org/a/european-remembrance-day-ukraine-lit...

For reactors that could be threatened, they should be "walk-away safe" and even more focused on recycling spent fuel so large quantities are not necessary to keep on hand.

The more likely scenario I would envision is that - under the guise of business "joint venture partnerships in next generation energy" - the technological know how and access to a steady stream of the requisite raw materials to build weapons will leak to more questionable parts of the world.

It's kind of like now that humans conquered polio and smallpox, the next challenge toward advancing the human race is ridding ourselves of cancer. If polio and smallpox returned, we'd be back to fighting those.

e.g. Here's a company that was licensed to build SMR (small modular reactors) last month that is designed to be underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/world/europe/ukraine-cher...

> In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr. Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said.

> But in invisible hot spots, some covering an acre or two, some just a few square yards, radiation can soar to thousands of times normal ambient levels.

> A soldier in such a spot would be exposed every hour to what experts consider a safe limit for an entire year, said Mr. Chareyron, the nuclear expert. The most dangerous isotopes in the soil are Cesium 137, Strontium 90 and various isotopes of plutonium. Days or weeks spent in these areas bring a high risk of causing cancer, he said.

Fission waste is truly long term. Just like desertification.

I agree with you.

not to mention, maybe the place you want to attack doesn't have a dam?

If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.

If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”, then the problem is: those random technical points are largely a distraction from the important questions of how we decarbonize quickly. The fossil fuel industry understands this perfectly, because they have a lot of skin in the game.

Last time I heard, it wasn't pro-nuclear France that urgently built a new LNG terminal, it was staunchly anti-nuclear Germany (in 2023!!). So I have doubt about your analysis.

"Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there.

France produced 15.1% less power in 2022 and the volume fell short of national usage by 1%."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

I wonder if it's not even more cynical than that because it doesn't seem right. We still need an alternative controllable* source of energy when renewables can't cover the demand (no wind, no sunshine), and it needs to cover peak demand... For now aside from hydro it's mostly fossil fuels: coal, gas and oil.

As far as the current tech goes, my understanding is that "renewables" are much more compatible with profits from fossil fuel than nuclear power is.

* is "controllable" the right word in this context in english?

I believe the appropriate term is dispatchable.

I don’t disagree whatsoever that the fossil fuel industry is up to tricks. What I’m saying is I don’t care what their intentions are. I care about results. If Hitler came back and found a way to fix climate change, but his intention was in order to create a better planet for Aryan people, I’d simultaneously despise him and support the fix.

That’s an extreme example of course, but trying to make my point that when we’re facing extinction, we shouldn’t take solutions off the table. We should ignore intentions and look at results.

To me, all this arguing about their intentions is a distraction that keeps us from solving the problem.

We have a slim chance of fixing climate change, and I have yet to see a single fact to dissuade me from believing nuclear is our best hope. Even if the people behind the push turned out to be scumbags.

Who are themselves.

(Just thought the story would make more sense if I filled in that last part. :-))

Yes, there is a significant amount of data and research that supports the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy compared to oil. Here are a few examples:

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2020, the average global cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems was lower than the cost of producing electricity from new fossil fuel plants, including coal and natural gas.

A recent study by the consultancy firm Lazard found that the cost of utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States has fallen significantly in recent years, and is now cheaper than the cost of power generated from coal and natural gas in most regions of the country.

The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar energy in the United States has fallen by more than 50% over the past decade, and is projected to continue to decline in the future.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the cost of solar PV and wind energy has declined by over 80% and 60%, respectively, since 2010. IRENA also found that renewable energy is now the cheapest source of new power generation in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and the United States.

These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the trend of declining costs for renewable energy and increasing competitiveness with oil and other fossil fuels.

Obviously we shouldn't rely on ChatGPT for our answers to life, but it's not a terrible list. Except for the absolute lack of any mention of nuclear, which I think fairly reflects the zeitgeist but not the real science.

Here's what it said:

1. Switch to Renewable Energy Sources: We should phase out the use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower. This would reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants from burning fossil fuels.

2. Increase Energy Efficiency: We should invest in technologies and practices that reduce energy consumption, such as LED lighting, efficient heating and cooling systems, and better insulation.

3. Plant Trees and Protect Forests: Trees absorb carbon dioxide, so planting more of them can help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We should also protect existing forests and prevent deforestation.

4. Reduce Food Waste: Food waste is a major contributor to climate change, as it releases methane and other greenhouse gases when it decomposes. We should reduce food waste and increase food recycling.

5. Reduce Meat Consumption: Animal agriculture is a major source of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, so reducing meat consumption can help reduce emissions. We should also promote plant-based diets.

6. Improve Transportation: We should invest in public transportation, electric vehicles, and other low-emission transportation options. This would reduce emissions from cars and other vehicles.

7. Educate and Advocate: We must educate people about the causes and consequences of climate change, and advocate for public policies that can help mitigate climate change.

Yes, the cost of generating a watt-hour of power from renewables is competitive with fossil fuels. If you could put those watt-hours in a tank somewhere those numbers would work. However, a tank for a watt-hour is called a battery--and storing that watt-hour is going to cost you more than creating it.

In practice what happens is that renewables reduce the fuel use by gas plants. You still need just as many gas plants, though, and once you count those costs the renewables are no longer the cheapest.

https://www.perplexity.ai/?s=u&uuid=2921714c-3614-41ae-82d1-...

This is an interesting theory devoid of evidence to back it up.

In Germany it's the same companies running fossil and nuclear btw.

They also expand into renewables now.

Now, if your objective is public safety you should use a different standard: Better than any viable competing technology. Within the limit of rounding nuclear is currently 100x safer than it's closest competitor: natural gas. By mandating that level of nuclear safety we are actually increasing deaths by causing the use of a far more dangerous technology instead.

(And note that her post repeats a common mistake about nuclear safety--assigning the Fukushima deaths to the nuclear plant rather than to the politicians. The evacuation of the city did not make sense from a safety standpoint. Growing food there will not be a good idea for some time but the expected death toll from sitting put was zero. The only non-worker nuclear power deaths are from Chernobyl.)

There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fucking around and arguing about it, and just get on with building it.

I live in an area (Canadian prairies) where max energy consumption lines up with with minimum solar and wind production (-40C in December on a calm night). Even during the day, those calm bitterly cold days only have about 8 hours of sunlight from a sun that barely comes over the horizon. We're starting to build solar, we've had wind for a while, but even though we've committed to building SMR Nuclear, we're still in a situation where we've got coal and natural gas plants that are approaching EOL and they'll likely be replaced/retrofitted to burn more fossil fuels because we won't have any sufficiently reliable baseload ready.

And BC has tons of hydro.

So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.

863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy

Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat.

Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity.

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous.

3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs.

If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.

I've got one family member in Saskatchewan with rooftop solar looking at numbers similar to you. Another has 40 acres and a honey operation so just has ground mounted solar and often zeroes his electricity bill even during winter months, although he's still using gas for heating. Just got a heat pump water heater, so he's heading in that direction.

Saskatchewan has lots of land, so we we can do it collectively even if we can't do it ourselves just with roof tops.

As far as the urban spots go, my electricity+gas numbers there approximately match the size of the entire lot. Extrapolating a bit and assuming that my house is “average”, that works out to needing a solar farm about the size of Regina to power the city in the winter. Maybe half the size when considering all of the street area.

As of last year they just give a 25% credit.

I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.

https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M

Can small modular reactors like those designed by NuScale do better? Maybe. But we're not going to find out sooner than 2030, which is when NuScale plans to have its first plant operational: https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about

I’m totally on board for building more but it doesn’t seem like this is a solved problem yet.

True.

> her logic and her facts were solid.

I came to a somewhat different conclusion after reading that article: I felt it was sufficiently blatant, manipulative, and simply wrong that no one would fall for that. Ah well.

Nuclear should be a part of decarbonization, and you can search my comment history here to see I've said so for a long time. But the breezy 'I was misinformed!' tone of this article is PR because it dismisses rather than engages with criticisms of the nuclear industry.

For contrast, consider that British Nuclear Fuels used the Irish Sea as a dumping ground for nuclear waste through the 1970s, becoming a significant bone of contention between the UK and the Republic of Ireland: https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en....

Though practices have since changed and risks appear to have been mitigated, the substack article just ignores the uncomfortable reality of past abuses which should inform policy assessments. When someone tells a just-so story, even if you agree with it - in fact, especially then - you should question whether it's purpose is to educate or to manipulate.

That seems factually incorrect, and the anti-renewables paragraph was the thing that jumped out at me most, though the author claims not "to say that we should abandon renewables altogether, but to illustrate that all energy generation carries an environmental cost, and no solution is perfect."

> I also learned that batteries cannot be recycled.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a British foundation highly critical of the anthropogenic global warming scientific consensus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Warming_Policy_Foun...

Isn't there some serious, vigorous debate on this topic?

And from what I've read a bunch of the people claiming it will be a benefit for humans are speaking strictly on an economic basis, not a quality of life basis.

That was my reaction; but the way she characterizes her younger self was not at all convincing. People who change their views show more sympathy and understanding for their younger self than the author does, who just dismisses herself as a naive idiot (before moving on to explain the rather basic things she's "learned" about radioactive materials in the meantime).

if you think that nuclear is an awesome energy source why shouldn’t you work for increasing its adoption?

Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.

At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today anyway, because renewables have only become cost competitive relatively recently. Even without lobbying by the oil industry people had powerful incentives until now to stick with the technology that didn’t require them to put on a sweater or pay more for energy.

The anti-nuclear movement by contrast knee-capped the last best hope for climate change mitigation. A technology that could have been deployed—and catalyzed electrification and energy storage efforts—decades ago when we had more runway.

I've always hoped they're secretly funded/friends with the oil lobby, because otherwise that's just pure sadness.

For the past 100+ years, Russia has been one of the largest energy players in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. You can see this today in the Russian Invasion in Ukraine, as Germany tries to comply with the international regulations and shut the Russian Nord Stream pipeline off and can't; Russia has a stranglehold on everyone on that side of the world.

So, given that, they feared an America that could meet its energy needs without pollution, heavy investment, and significant cost; while Russia was literally killing its own people to make the oil and gas flow as a cost of doing business. Thus, they slipped right in and used the Hippies to astroturf an anti-nuclear position.

Reagan may have torn down that wall, but Russia won the cold war; and then they made sure, post-Soviet, to make sure we'd never attain energy independence. The end result of that trainwreck is currently under investigation by the FBI as per the recommendations of the Jan 6th Committee.

At a minimum, it seems that (thanks to ignorance) they lapped up all of the anti-nuclear FUD that was generated by the oil lobby and others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenpeace_Energy

You would have thought that France would have supplied the European continent with electricity now that Russia cut its gas supply, but it turns out that France received electricity from Germany even during this time.

It turns out that even new builds of nuclear power plants take years to be completed. Getting safety right is a challenge, the more we know about engineering and material science for nuclear plants, the more we know about challenges in building them, the more we need to do to avoid these risks, the harder it is to build a safe power plant.

By 2050 it will be easily possible to power the world using renewables. Ending nuclear at that point doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.

Disregarding electric dams because, while wonderful, those depend heavily on the country geography and I assume a lot of countries cannot build enough of them. (but we should build as much as we can of those, just don't expect 50% hydroelectricity everywhere)

Norway 98% since 2016. Costa Rica 98% since 2015. Scotland 97% in 2020. Uruguay 98% in 2021. New Zealand pushing close to 90%.

> Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting?

I don’t know what this means. If a country reports that X amount of energy came from a particular source in a particular year, that means the entire year. And if you believe these countries are lying and doing “creative accounting”, then the burden of proof lies with you to prove it, not for me to disprove it.

So except for Uruguay (which does look interesting), most countries mostly use renewable dispatchable sources which are perfect. But not all countries have the hydro potential / population ratio of Norway. We should use hydro as much as we can but we are limited by geography; once everything that can be used is we are stuck with nuclear, wind or solar. Maybe Uruguay could be an example of country that manages somehow with mostly solar/wind; I need to look into it. Thank you.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...

The sole closed nuclear plant (Fessenheim) was the oldest one, disputed by neighboring nations Germany and Switzerland (all owning stakes in it!) for seismic-related risks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant...

A new reactor (Flamanville-3, an EPR) was ordered in 2004, work began in 2007 for a delivery in 2012, it is not delivered yet and 6x times over-budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

A huge program (55 to 95 billions euros) aiming at upgrading all existing reactors in order to run them for 60 or even 80 years was launched and runs: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage

Governments adopted sustained nuclear R&D budgets. See «Graphique 1», French ahead: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/energie-recherche-et-developpem...

Governments also sold reactors to Finland (running project, way over-budget and delay), China (2 reactors, over-budget and delay, and they stayed offline or at low-power for a full year after an incident) and the U.-K. (this is a running project, already late and over-budget).

The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.

Fessenheim is the perfect reason for why Hollande wanted to close some of those plants: old, accident ridden, one of those which have to be closed down in summer due to possible overheating of nearby rivers and to top that off: it's in a region which may have earthquakes for which it is not prepared...

> The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.

Weird because there are plenty western countries which do have popular support for nuclear energy but still struggle with construction times and costs in astronomical ways.

And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything that could damage the environment. You could triple the output heat in the river and it would change absolutely nothing.

Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip. Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

That is false. It was an old and accident ridden plant.

> And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything

Luckily those limits are set by people who know what they're doing and not the nuclear astroturf online.

> Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip.

That's pure propaganda from the opposite political spectrum and is not even worth the discussion anymore at this point.

> Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

We even had to get some coal plants back from retirement (just like you did) because your rotting nuclear fleet isn't performing and it's cold outside. You're welcome :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu...

Moreover the long-term deposit site (dubbed 'Cigéo') isn't ready.

France closed a working-order nuclear plant for political reasons just two years before, so we're not making exactly the brightest decisions here either.

I believe in nuclear as a technology, and I believe in mankind's ability to perform science and engineering tasks.

I don't have a lot of faith in the role of the government in properly and adequately regulating a booming nuclear industry.

Is it though? The US Navy has a pretty impressive nuclear safety record for the number of reactors they have in service.

To flip it, would you have more trust in a private company with nuclear safety? If the same decisions being made that allows PG&E to cut their funding for maintenance that allows their lines to be the cause of California's forest fires, why would we trust they would pay for the upkeep on a nuclear reactor?

If the government wanted PG&E to properly fund their line maintenance, PG&E would properly fund their line maintenance.

Whoever was behind it successfully managed to delay nuclear fission adoption by about 60 years for all of the EU and UK except France causing massive amounts of totally unnecessary CO2 emissions in the process.

[Rosatom] ranks first in the overseas NPP construction, responsible for 76% of global nuclear technology exports: 35 nuclear power plant units, at different stages of development, in 12 countries, as of December 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosatom

France is often considered to be in "The West".

Of course some green energy climate tree hugger whatever protesters oppose nuclear energy, but they are powerless and don't change public opinion much and certainly don't influence outcomes. To my knowledge it's government regulations and laws that stifle nuclear energy - not protesters or climate people.

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/23/americans-c...

It's like an Illuminati conspiracy theory except with people who dont use soap...

Global warming will cost countless trillions and displace, sicken, and/or kill billions in the coming centuries.

Nobody is talking about fossil anymore. It's on the way out just like nuclear.

Well, from, like 1960 until about 2010 everybody who built a power plant did exactly that.

And, from about 2015 onwards if you didn't ignore it it's still 5x more expensive than solar panels or wind farms.

So, not a likely conspiracy theory.

The anti-nuclear movement is also still alive and doing well but at this point it's like arguing over spilled milk, the damage is mostly done and a lot of is irreversible. We can try to salvage nuclear but we've already regressed to further impure sources in some countries so progress seems unlikely.

0. Nuclear is not forbidden.

1. Nuclear power is exceedingly common in many countries.

2. Electricity production is not (by far) the only source of carbon emissions. Why have we also not seen any major action to reduce emissions from other sources? Or did the treehuggers also force people to fly, eat meat and drive large cars?

3. > Last best hope.

Energy efficiency. Regulation incentivizing fuel efficiency. Low carbon public transportation. Incentives to reduce the carbon emissions from agriculture. Renewables. The list of available remedies is long.

But sure, go ahead and blame environmentalists for the destruction profit driven market capitalism caused. If that soothes your cognitive dissonance.

What is this point replying to?

Anyway, over-regulation can make nuclear energy commercially unviable. It doesn't take a ban for nuclear to die.

If nuclear was truly this obvious answer to aquire abundant clean energy, wouldn't our business friendly leaders embrace it with open arms?

A couple of treehuggers didn't stop them from allowing overfishing the sea, or from extracting fuel from oil sands. Despite those things having very clear negative environmental consequences. And strong popular opposition.

But for Nuclear apparently they went totally in the opposite direction. Deaf to the cries of businessmen they heavily regulated an obviously harmless and extremly profitable energy industry to death?

Occam's razor says there's a simpler explanation.

This is laughable. I come from a country that’s officially socialist. But even people from there want to come to Texas and drive a big SUV and live in a big house with a pool. Better yet, they want to attain that same standard of living in their own country.

If environmentalists tell people to turn down the thermostat and stop eating meet and crowd into public transit, they will lose every time.

Then I dearly hope turning down the thermostat, stopping eating meat, and crowding in public transport isn't necessary to prevent climate change.

Because if it is, and if you're right, then we are fucked.

And to people saying it is not possible, I call bullshit. There are large carbon footprint variations within the West. Of course countries have different circumstances, but it's also very clearly a question of political will.

The alternative economic systems are even worse on environmental grounds, and their only saving grace is their ineptness and inefficiency, which limits the amount of damage they cause.

Like, have you heard about environmental disaster of Aral Sea? About how Soviet Union explicitly pursued maximizing fossil extraction as its core economic policy? About the environmental disaster of Great Leap Forward? Check out the list of 10 most polluted places in the world, where are they? Literally the only one that got its pollution under capitalism is in Zambia, all the rest are in former Soviet Union, China and India, which started doing market economy when they were already high polluters.

The masses of environmentalists moved on from nuclear in the 80's but would surely return if nuclear regained traction.

We could have had the wind and solar revolution any time in the last 70 years. Instead trillions were gifted to fossil fuel and nuclear con artists.

This blame of the failure of nuclear on them being forced to sort-of clean up some of their mess rather than just sending native people to mine with no PPE and dumping tailings and waste wherever is a sad attempt at gaslighting.

"I don't like her and someone she works with" isn't persuasive. On a controversial topic, everyone with a view is going to be disliked by someone - it carries to significance.

I suppose your user name checks out...

This is just an ad hominem attack that does nothing to rebut the arguments.

You accuse someone to have a "cavalier attitude to science" and "being in cahoots with" parties you allege are suspicious and then you proceed to use Extinction Rebellion as a source? You should worry more how cavalier Extinction Rebellion are, and who they are in cahoots with.

This is a pretty serious claim.

> edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting.

This is an EVEN MORE serious claim.

Both of these need some serious backing. I don't see how what you're following up with is evidence to this claim. Maybe there's something I'm not getting because it just looks like typical group fighting to me. Political groups use strong language and often are quick to criticize other groups who are not aligned to a goal in the way that they are aligned (including wanting similar high level outcomes but through different means). I watched the Shellenberger Fox news link that they provided. More than half is Tucker on his typical idiotic rant then Shellenberger saying things that are like 70% true but out of context. Can't tell if he's just an idiot that doesn't grasp what "the nerds" are telling him or malicious (often difficult).

For the fossil fuel funding claims, I didn't dig in but I'll say that I actually wouldn't be surprised. These companies have a long history of funding several environmentalist groups. They had a history of funding Sierra Nevada Club[0] to promote anti-nuclear sentiment (this was highly successful btw). But the story here is actually more complicated than it would seem at first glance. I do think the Sierra Nevada Club members and even leaders (mostly) had good intentions and did believe that they were acting in the best interest of the environment. The same is probably true about the above group. But to see why this may be true we need to ask who benefits the most if you have differing groups that are concerned with reaching 0 emissions fighting one another? Fossil fuels. They are the current de facto solution to energy and unfortunately momentum is a powerful force. They've gladly promoted this war. (It's also not like they don't often try to paint themselves green. They fund plenty of green campaigns and even carbon scrubbing technologies. This is done for PR but those groups still get money. Kinda like filming yourself giving the homeless food and putting it on youtube. You get rich but the homeless probably (?) did get more food than they would have otherwise. The ethics is complicated here even if it is clear you're not a saint)

The fossil fuel industry wants us to think that the conversation is "renewables vs nuclear" instead of "renewables + nuclear vs renewables alone to fight fossil fuels". Moreso, they want us to think that energy can be acquired homogeneously. They both fund the nuclear bro idiots that want a 100% nuclear grid (ludicrous notion) as well as the renewable bros that think solar + batteries are going to work well in major cities that have weeks with no sun. Neither of these groups are listening to the real scientists working on this shit. These same scientists will even tell you that this is a complicated issue and they may not even know the full answer themselves but are working as a community to solve this. Why? Because climate change is the most complicated threat humans have ever faced and unfortunately no singular person has enough expertise to answer half these questions accurately (though can have relatively good accuracy). The honest to god truth is that while we have our stupid uninformed quibbling online we aren't actively building out zero carbon solutions and the fossil fuel industry not only continues but grows because our energy needs also do. The honest to god truth is that the scientific community generally just says "let's just not take nuclear off the table. We'll use renewables where they best fit and nuclear is a good option if/when there are gaps to fill." While we quibble the threat grows[1] and the cost to turn back balloons.

[0] https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear

[1] There have been grounds made and we're not actually on the "business as usual" trajectory, but we are still not building nearly fast enough. Carbon neutral isn't enough, we need to be carbon negative. A much tougher goal. The truth here is that even to reach net zero we're going to have to learn how to scrub chemicals from the atmosphere and oceans. Emissions are far more than vehicles and energy, and many of these are more difficult to decarbonize.

I worked in the industry for about a decade on nuclear, solar, wind, coal, and natural gas. I mostly worked in capacity planning and did some light industrial engineering.

There is not some massive split between 'Big fossil fuel' and 'big renewable'. Most of the generators are diversified in a blend of all different types of power plants. It's ridiculous to advance these conspiracy theories about companies running marketting campaigns against themselves.

This claim that every statement about nuclear power is some 'industry shill' narrative is really ignorant and misinformed. Then there is the lines-on-the-corkboard about what organizations they belong to... trying to infer that this is some sort of nefarious pysop.. when in reality most people in the industry are part of organizations that span every power source.

I did alot of work with SCE and Nextera which are both incredibly diversified and have a variety of power plants.

Even the infamous Duke (typically considered heavy on fossil fuels) has plenty of renewable and nuclear generation.

There is also a complete lack of knowledge about base load versus peak load, and other aspects of power generation in the thread below. The commenter in the thread claiming that 'Renewables are ALWAYS cheaper' is not correct and is running an interesting theory that energy companies want to create pollution so badly that they will throw away potential profits and lose money.

This entire discussion is pretty much the peak of software engineers who can't tell the difference between a crescent and a ratchet weighing in expertise about an industrial field they do not comprehend.

https://www.thefp.com/p/climate-activism-has-a-cult-problem

TLDR: She writes about her time in Extinction Rebellion as a media guru and highlights some issues the group has with it's 'eccentric' founder.

That article came out 18 days ago. So there seems to be something of a media coordination going on.