Unfortunately "the environmentalist movement" didn't have the information regarding the dangers of climate change and the information about the near-zero threat from low level nuclear radiation in 1970ies. Hindsight is 20/20.

That said; planning and construction of new nuclear reactors peaked in the early 1970ies, before large scale accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) really mobilized civil society against nuclear power.

The reason the West stopped building is because even with state support, it's not such a financially attractive investment. That's why "the East" continued building more and more reactors until the big incident. (Arguably their reactors were also much less safe and thus probably cheaper by quite a bit.)

After the accidents showed that these designs where just not quite safe enough, redundancy in the safety systems were added. The thing is; as soon as those reactor designs got a bit more safe, they got much more expensive quite quickly. Just look at France's history of nuclear reactor development.CP0, CP1 and CP2 were somewhat cheap and they were able to churn out the things in quite a number.P4 and P'4 were already much more complex, more expensive and it just wasn't possible to mass produce these things like before. By N4 the economy of scale had broken down almost completely.

That's the problem with nuclear reactors. They are simple in principle, but fiendishly difficult in practice and enormously complex. So complex indeed that the learning curve doesn't yield any compounding returns. That's what we've seen play out in the last 50 years.

I don't know how things evolved in Sweden, but I assume that Swedish reactors don't have all the safety features of modern reactors. I guess that's what made them cheap, just like the CP-series in France.

Wind and PV build up much faster, are orders of magnitudes less complex and provide cheaper electricity.

There is just no reason to build nuclear.

> €50 billion for several decades of clean energy seems like a pretty good deal.

No, that €50 billion is just what EDF is in the reds. The actual cost is much, much higher, of course. French citizens still have to pay for their electricity, after all.

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the 1970ies[0] because with the additional complexity to make them safe, the systems were just too expensive.

It has nothing to do with "relentless irrational opposition".

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the early 1970ies[0], long before there was any large organized civil movement organizing against it - because with the required additional complexity to make them safe, the technology was just too expensive.

(As always - it's the capitalists that messed things up, not civil society.)

Despite having 70 years of progress, nuclear today is more expensive than ever. It just doesn't scale.

France's nuclear operator EDF is €50 billion in debt. They make about €3 billion per year - and have between €150 - €200 billion investments on the table for the next 10 years. Go figure.

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

France tried it. Now their nuclear operator is €50 billion in the negatives, makes about €3 billion per year in profits and has to invest about €150 billion in new reactors, upgrades, refits and infrastructure.

Nuclear is just not worth the hassle.

Nuclear has had its moment. That moment is gone.

At this point nuclear is just a dead horse. It hasn't managed to displace fossil fuels in over 70 years - a feat that renewables have done within 20 years. Nuclear is too slow and too expensive.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/france...

If scientific investigation shows that there are many causes that have a relevant impact on "A", then saying that "A has multiple relevant and possible causes" is not hand-waving. It's stating the fact.

Hand-waving is to pearl clutchlingly throw out vague terms like "affirmative action" and "diversity statements" without properly stating what the mechanism is supposed to be and without providing any evidence that it is relevant in the last.

You know, polemic tribal whistle-blowing like you are doing. That's hand-waving.

Secondly there's no strong argument that links larger population groups genetic makeup to intelligence - that's what Watson claimed and what's so infuriating; it's plain racism. There's an inherited component in intelligence - that much is right. But population groups have enough diversity that this does not have a statistically relevant impact on these groups as a whole.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/james-watson-s...

What you show is that there are not many conservatives in academia. The reason for that is manifold. It could be that they are forced out. It could be that their views are changed with higher learning and turn progressive. It could be that conservatives self-select to not go into academia.

Pointing that out is not hand-waving.

That the US military is run by a clown is a feature, not a bug. That an incompetent buffoon like Trump is at the steering wheel is not an accident.

Trump is doing exactly what the moneyed interests behind him have put him in power for - dismantling the system of checks and balances, of regulations and restrictions that prevent the oligarchs from thoroughly screwing the population.

Good luck trying to restore any of your civil institutions after Trump and his ilk - and I don't expect that to be after 2028.

Within 20 years Europe has shifted to almost 50% renewables in their electricity production, the US is at 25% and China at 30% (and rapidly growing). Demand has been cut massively through energy efficiency laws. CO2 emissions have been reduced enough that the IPC now sees the RCP8.5 scenario as unrealistic.

We've already changed quite a lot. And this despite you not cutting back on meat or on driving. Think about it.

> There is nothing you can do about this. I am not not going to eat less meat or drive my car less than I find convenient to please some leftist eco-warrior.

You don't do "it" to please some leftist eco-warrior, but because "it" is a unsustainable lifestyle. Whatever shape "it" actually takes.

Voluntarily opting out of a high-CO2 lifestyle will do exactly nothing. Demanding that anyone recognizing the threat of climate change and demanding a different approach "first change their lifestyles" or using their lifestyles as an indicator of commitment is ludicrous. This is a global systemic issue that cannot be fixed by individual action. Game theory tells you why.

Besides that; all the nice and shiny things you mention - the busses and trains and the cement - can be produced and operated at fraction of their current CO2 cost. Wind mills and PV panels offset their CO2 cost by magnitudes if they are replacing fossil fuel industries.

There's a middle ground between "lets burn it all to the ground" and "let's go back to the savanna".

A whole planets' society's structural problems cannot be solved by an individuals action. Your own attitude explains the 'why'.

This is a systemic issue that needs systemic fixing.

What do you think slavery is?

2. You can't live as a hunter-gatherers because the land has been enclosed and privatized.

There's no choice involved here. Your - and my - freedoms have been taken away a long time ago.

Nobody gets that rich without throwing overboard any morals or ethics. You won't become a billionaire - let alone a trillionaire - if you are bothered by the wellbeing of other humans. Just being that rich is unethical, given that there are currently people starving to death on the planet.

To our society it's more important that few people have the opportunity to get insanely rich rather than that all people have food and shelter.

Priorities I guess.