[vld_chk]

Very sad to see that such important topic and message are going to be delivered by such freak. Now people who are against nuclear power will have even more emotional arguments against it.

P.S. Specially for people who “if you don’t live nearby: shut up”, I have lived near NPP my entire childhood and both of my parents worked 30+ years in this industry.

[epistasis]

I agree that this is not a beneficial contribution to improving the public debate about nuclear.

However the public debate around nuclear is pretty much meaningless until there's a revolution in nuclear technology:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35159449

Research on nuclear tech is continuing apace, without being influenced by public debate. There are plenty of sites that would love to have new nuclear if such a tech revolution happens, especially at existing NPP.

[erentz]

Vogtle is an outlier in most regards. A tech revolution isn’t really needed, the tech works fine. Simplifications of existing tech like the BWRX-300 seem to be gaining a lot of traction (in theory should be more expensive per watt, but can be contracted in more palatable sizes). TVE is pushing ahead with plans to build BWRX-300s. Canada is returning to building nuclear again. As is France. Poland. So on. Sadly it seems the US may lag but that’s the way with a lot of things in this country. It will still be good if other countries can make the advancements.

[1] https://twitter.com/_hannahritchie/status/163712120205237452...

[erentz]

I’m of two minds about that. I agree this is a guy with a history of peddling conspiracies and dictators. Not someone I want in a debate that should be driven by facts and reason. But I realized, in my experience there is a large overlap between people with anti-nuclear attitudes and fans of his. (Boomers, greens, far leftists, et al.) So if they see someone they (sadly) respect put out the message that “we’ve been wrong about nuclear”, the maybe they’ll be open to hearing it?