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Comment by teruakohatu | Hacker News Reader

> The amount of lobbying that hits this site about nuclear power is inexplicable. ... lobby backed propaganda get tons of up votes on HN

From the HN Guidelines [1]:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Lobbying should be added to the list, because I see more and more comments of people stating that X is only on HN because of lobbyists, rather than the more likely explanation that it is something users are interested in. Nuclear has always been popular on HN, along with all renewable competitors to nuclear.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Fair enough, I may have skirted a line with my comment.

So, if it's true that HN is being targetted (give me a moment of leeway here) should we go to Reddit or elsewhere to discuss it? (serious question, as it seems like that is not really allowed here because of a ironic set of rules that protect careful actors)

There isn't some global conspiracy to prop up nuclear.

There's no big nuclear. Big oil is a thing but nuclear is driven largely by people that are interested in science and technology. No one will profit more from nuclear success than the children of tomorrow.

The greatest minds of the 20th century were dedicated to figuring out the nature of our universe by looking into particle physics. It's easy to see why it's appealing as that was arguably the last great scientific leap we've undertaken in our understanding of the universe. It just so happens we can generate a shit ton of energy with particle physics.

There are lots of other 'green' organisations that go against nuclear that play into the hands of big oil and prevent a technology from displacing traditional carbon heavy energy generation.

It depends on the country.

In the US there is significant money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YRSqaPtMg with the common side effects: https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/spiraling-costs-of-vogtle-... https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Co-owners-sue-Georgia-Po...

In Germany (and many parts of Europe) the same companies which run gas and coal plants, run nuclear. And there are state interests like nuclear weapons, submarines, etc.

So no, it is not just some nuclear enthusiasts or other romanticisms. It's just money. As everywhere else. In the case of nuclear energy it's also many times taxpayer money. A lot of it.

I would point to this person as a nuclear enthusiast

https://www.ted.com/speakers/kirk_sorensen

Circa 2010 he came to the conclusion that Thorium could save the world, he runs a startup now

https://flibe-energy.com/

but this is nowhere near being a large or established industry. If anything the work that's been done to advance molten salt reactors has made plutonium cycle reactors based on chlorides instead of fluorides look really good. See

https://www.moltexenergy.com/

I don't know if you've intentionally misunderstood me or if I was hard to understand. This is not about one of those "just 30 years away"-technologies and their startups. This is about EXISTING nuclear reactors and people who want to keep them running or build more of them.

Their representatives on the anti-social networks are people like Shellenberger and his "Institute" selling the "green nuclear" idea while spreading hate against renewable energy with it.

- https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/the-new-denia...

- https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2020/09/16/statement-on-zion-... (NSFW)

- https://nuclear.foe.org.au/michael-shellenbergers-pro-nuclea...

So this here is why when people say "there's no nuclear industry conspiracy" I call bullshit. There absolutely was a nuclear industry conspiracy, and that conspiracy was to produce reactors that are complementary to nuclear weapons programs.

Part of the draw of thorium and some other options is that are anywhere from difficult to nearly impossible to weaponize, but they were ignored because they didn't support the Arms Race. The narrative and the precedents were set around a losing strategy.

Not unlike how some people think that the Space Shuttle fucked the space program, because it elevate pilots above progress. Neither is as simple as that, but these choices had huge and long lasting consequences, and I wonder where we would be if we had decided not to choose and we had pursued both.

Oil and nuclear are not in competition. Oil barely is used for electricity production. And for other fossil fuel power plants: they are in the same hands as nuclear power plants.

There biggest players however are militaries of states with nuclear weapons, as a lot of the industry is dual use as can be seen with Iran.

I was a bit shocked to know that Maldives get around 100% of electricity from imported oil.

It would take 9 Maldives to exceed the GDP of the least productive state in the US ($4B vs $36B).

As some mathematicians and statisticians are fond of pointing out, comparing percentages without accounting for the denominator is a fool's errand.

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