Actually, the nuclear power industry did / does indeed run astroturfing campaigns

Which nuclear power industry? Given the sheer scale of a nuclear power plant project, most research and reactor projects are public projects, with only SMRs seeing any recent interest in the USA. So you think it’s the States that are conducting astroturfing campaigns? The same states that have been sabotaging nuclear power everywhere since Chernobyl? Is there any evidence of this?

For example the “pro-nuclear civil society” in Japan.

The only thing I have found about this is a study which I have to pay 43€ to read.

If you read up on nuclear power online you will find an abundance of websites and groups which offer very one-sided information

You can find that kind of content for about any other subject you can think of. That doesn’t make it proof of astroturfing.

and are tied to the nuclear power industry.

Same question, what is exactly the “nuclear power industry” you’re talking about?

Astroturfing campaigns promoting solar and wind power can be directly linked to the oil industry, as when Jay Anthony Precourt, head of oil and energy start-ups and a major investor in gas, swung a total of $80 million over three years at Stanford University to finance the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency, which later published a glowing report on a 100% renewable future. (If you don’t see the link between fossil fuels and renewables, take a look at Germany: when there’s no wind, they burn coal and gas. Fossils are very compatible with renewables.)

Can you find the same with nuclear?

Nuclear fission power had huge investments and substitutions but turned out to not be economically feasible in most cases. There is a lot of money to be lost and made in this industry.

This is factually incorrect. What’s expensive is investing to build a cutting-edge industry, then dismantling it before it becomes profitable under the pressure of public opinion.

The French Court of Auditors has estimated the total cost of French nuclear power at around 130 billion euros between 1960 and 2010, including research, construction and maintenance. At its peak, a 1000MW unit of French nuclear power cost 1.5 billion euros, and the French nuclear industry produced two 900 to 1300MW reactors a year for two decades.

Everything came to an abrupt halt in the 90s, not because it wasn’t profitable, not because it didn’t work, but because the Russians made a mess of their power plant, which didn’t even have the same design as the others, killed a few hundred/thousand people, and traumatized hundreds of millions.

Between scientists there is also no consensus whether nuclear power (in its current application) is a good thing.

There is no definition of “a good thing”.

On the other hand, we know that nuclear power is the least polluting, least resource/space-consuming and safest form of controllable energy.

The increase in nuclear power is an essential of the 4 scenarios of the IPCC reports, and the European Union, based on these reports and other studies, has recognized nuclear power as an energy with a positive impact on the environment. and they incorporated it into the green taxonomy.

very persistent astroturfing

To suggest that the nuclear industry is capable of any kind of lobbying activity is utterly laughable, given its history. We’re talking about a sector which, for over 40 years, has been unable to prevent the cancellation of almost all its research projects or new reactor construction projects, and which still sees very strong opposition all over the world, as well as in the European Parliament.

The only reason why nuclear power’s reputation has been partially restored in recent months is that electricity prices in Europe have soared as a result of the common market, and countries that have opted for renewable energies have become dependent on Russian fossil fuels.

This is the entirety of the high-level nuclear waste that France produced for 80 years while having 70%+ of nuclear in its electricity mix.

The question of nuclear waste is an extremely minor problem compared to the ecological issues we’re facing, and which we’ve been addressing for decades.

Anti-nuclear people just prefer to cover their ears and pretend it’s an insolvable problem.

• France has been a net exporter for 40 years straight before that, as well as being the top exporter most of that time in Europe.
• Also they’re back to Top 1 right now.
• Last year’s gap in electricity production was not due to heat (only a few reactors were slowed down for a few hours, and we’re talking about less than 0.5% loss due to these shutdowns over the year).

Besides, it’s not a technical limitation on nuclear power, it’s an ecological measure.

The hole in production was due to a corrosion problem detected in several reactors, which occurred at the same time as maintenance work in other reactors that were behind schedule because of COVID. This would have had no impact if nuclear power had not been left virtually abandoned for 30 years because of the anti-nuclear movement.

It’s the classic story: anti-nukes shoot nuclear power in the foot, then claim that nuclear power doesn’t work, despite reality.

Responding to sarcastic, disrespectful and immature one-liners from someone obviously ignorant on the subject is neither exciting nor productive, so I’ll just throw out a few points in response to your last comment without bothering to expand on them and then move on.

• With the exception of 2010, EDF made a net profit of 2 to 5 billions a year between 2005 and 2021.
• EDF and its predecessors were public bodies, and were forced by the State to take over unprofitable activities.
• ARENH
• Tariff shield + European gas-indexed electricity market

Here is the entire volume of high-level, long-lived waste that France needs to store over the long term for 80 years of nuclear power (with 70%+ nuclear power in its electricity mix).

The question of nuclear waste, hammered home by the anti-nuclear crowd, has long since been answered. And the answer is: it’s far from being a problem.

As for the cost of storage and decommissioning, it makes no sense if we do not give a financial order of magnitude.

At French current electricity price, a 915MW reactor will produce 1.1 billion euros of electricity over one year. A 1500MW reactor will produce 1.8 billion euros of electricity over one year.

When you sell 60 billions of euros worth of electricity per year for 60 years, even if you pay 50 billions for storage and 2 billions to decommission an entire plant, it’s still quite profitable.

Except those reactors are off 30-50% of the time due to shoddy construction

For French nuclear power, the lowest load factor ever recorded is 54% in 2022. The cause is the number of maintenance operations postponed because of COVID, plus a corrosion problem detected on several reactors of the same generation, which have since been repaired.

• This is an extremely unlikely combination of circumstances, on the one hand
• On the other hand, it wouldn’t have had any consequences if we’d had more redundancy, and hadn’t suddenly stopped building reactors for 25 years.
• Despite this, nuclear power still has a load factor 2x higher than French wind or solar power.

The rest of the time, the load factor of French nuclear power hovers around 70-75%, and that’s not due to bad design, it’s a strategy. I’ll let you read this link to learn more.

€1.5/W in 2023 money is pure fiction

Of course it does. But the fact is that french nuclear power has paid for itself dozens of times over. It’s factual, it’s historical.

and overnight costs with free capital aren’t real costs once you adjust for inflation and stop cherry picking the first reactors before negative learning rates kicked in.

Go argue with the Cour des Comptes, not me

Chernobyl and Fukushima. These two events, which between them account for a few thousand deaths at most (compared with the tens of thousands of deaths caused by coal in Europe alone, for example), triggered a panic fear of nuclear power.

For decades, the nuclear industry has been abandoned and sabotaged, with projects such as Phénix, Superphénix and Astrid in France, and virtually all new reactor projects, cancelled due to anti-nuclear opposition.

Competent nuclear engineers and technicians have retired without being able to pass on their know-how, and cutting-edge nuclear-related industries have disappeared or been converted.

We can also thank the Germans for sabotaging the EPR. We started the project together, they forced us to add a lot of totally unjustified redundancies and safety features that made the prototype very complex and therefore costly to build, and then they slammed the door on us.

France was able to output 2 reactors per year at 1,5 billion of euros per 1000MW for more than 2 decades during the 70’s to 90’s. The whole French nuclear industry has cost around 130-150 billions between 1960 and 2010, including researches, build and maintenance of France’s whole nuclear fleet.

A 1000MW reactor, at current French electricity price and for a 80% capacity factor, generates 1,4 billion of euros worth of electricity per year, for a minimum of 60 years.

Nuclear is not costly, and can absolutely compete by itself, if you don’t sabotage it and plan it right.

we had almost no facemasks and much better results

You’re comparing apples to oranges, and you’re throwing every other possible explanation out the window because it does not fit your point.

Norway, Finland and Denmark, whose demographic, geographical and cultural situations are much more comparable, recorded far fewer Covid deaths per capita than Sweden.