> axe-grinding completely unrelated to the actual topic?

Isn’t that an accurate description of considering skin color, etc., when deciding who to hire to build nuclear power plants?

Is that something that is actually widely done (or at all)? The article gives absolutely no indication, just throws it in. Right after putting environmental concerns into scare quotes and portrying them as "opposition to any human future which does not involve half-naked pithecanthropoids digging for grubs with dull sticks".

That's very much not evoking the image of someone doing impartial technical analysis.