Looks like Mycle Schneider, the lead author, is a founding member of WISE-Paris, which is the French branch of the anti-nuclear group WISE, which he directed from 1983 to 2003. [wikipedia]
but from an above comment:
>Not disputing, but in the interests of full disclosure, the presenter is (per YT About):
>* Professor David Ruzic
>* Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering
>* Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering
>* University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professors usually don't gain these qualifications because they started out anti-nuclear.
Something must have reversed his opinion somewhere along the line, no doubt he has greater domain expertise than all but a few others sharing similar deep knowledge.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26213984
Predictably, it didn't bring up the costs (though of course the first comment on HN did) but it tried to play the "environmentalist who has seen the light" angle pretty hard.
It's actually kind of weird how many articles like this do get submitted to hacker news. Link says "it's safe & making a comeback", comments say "it's just not economic and no" <- this has happened quite a few times.
It might be useful if they tried to conceal it. E.g tried to present themselves as an objective researcher at a think tank that takes money from general dynamics/lockheed or a journalist who clearly hastily rewrote a press release.