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> You can thank Greenpeace and CND and their misinformed campaigns for that. I always think it's funny when HN thinks that Greenpeace is omnipotent. Their very

> You can thank Greenpeace and CND and their misinformed campaigns for that. I always think it's funny when HN thinks that Greenpeace is omnipotent. Their very first campaign in 1971 was against commercial whaling, which still hasn't stopped more than 50 years later. Greenpeace also has a decade-long campaign against oil, which has not exactly succeeded. Why are HN readers so quick to think that Greenpeace is all powerful? Or is Greenpeace just a convenient boogeyman to trot out whenever anyone is critical of nuclear power?

rockemsockem 2y ago
True, the Sierra Club has done much more to twist the opinions of green-minded folks. I think it's because Green Peace's stunts against whaling got them lots of press and made them the most famous of the green organizations.
- teachrdan 2y ago
  This still fails to address the fundamental question: Why do so many HNers think that environmental groups have infinite power to shape public policy around nuclear energy, while they have failed to succeed in any number of other campaigns, including ones that are more serious (climate change) and/or self-contained (commercial whaling)?
  - kimixa 2y ago
    I'd suggest it's because the public discourse around these things are dominated by the talking points pushed by those same groups. They may not be the only driver of that discourse, or even the primary origin, but they're arguably the face of that viewpoint.
  - realusername 2y ago
    Because being against nuclear was and still is to some extent the core idea that unites all green parties. There's nothing else they all agree on and nothing else that defines better the green vote. Because of that, the green parties in most countries sold their votes in exchange of policies against nuclear as a first priority.
    - teachrdan 2y ago
      > being against nuclear was and still is to some extent the core idea that unites all green parties Are there green groups that support whaling? Coal-fired electrical plants? Global climate change? There are any number of other problems that "green parties" have in common. Having said that, it's important to note that Greenpeace and Sierra Club are not green parties, but non-profit organizations.
      - realusername 2y ago
        > Greenpeace and Sierra Club are not green parties, but non-profit organizations. The line is much blurrier than you might think. The green parties originate directly from those movements and there's significant exchange with the non-profit world. And yes, whaling or coal plants aren't pushed as much as nuclear as a subject, that's not even close.
DrBazza 2y ago
As someone that grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s with 3 TV channels that reached the majority of the UK, Greenpeace were a fixture on mainstream news. The past was somewhat different to today.
- nosianu 2y ago
  That does not address the comment you reply to, which looks at actual results. All the things the comment mentioned are from that same time period too. That shows that all that exposure and "awareness" still being chased today apparently did not help to achieve an actual result. That means that you attempting to show that awareness was achieved does not contradict the parent comment.
- damiankennedy 2y ago
  As a New Zealander born in the 70s I very much remember Greenpeace protesting against the testing of the nuclear weapons, the snap election in 1984, the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and then becoming nuclear free in 1987. Nuclear power was never going to get of the ground in that environment. In NZ, being nuclear free is like the 2nd amendment in the US.
  - DrBazza 2y ago
    Much the same in the UK. In the 1970s the BBC news programmes gave huge amounts of air time to Greenpeace and CND. Greenham Common and CND being given the most coverage. When the only source of information is a daily newspaper, or nightly news programmes, a huge number of people can be influenced by whatever a channel like the BBC was broadcasting. Unlike today where you can read wikipedia (!) or switch to one of a hundred other channels and simply just not watch the news. TV set the agenda back then, and the course of nuclear sentiment for a few decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_the_U...
pydry 2y ago
>Why are HN readers so quick to think that Greenpeace is all powerful? The nuclear lobby cant exactly blame the exhorbitant cost of nuclear power for their problems. They need a more exciting scapegoat that isnt "it's 5x the cost of the competition".
- canadianfella 2y ago
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- nomel 2y ago
  Imagine if all the governments of the world came up with a mass produced, cookie cutter, plant, rather than starting all fabrication and design from scratch for each plant?
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Theoretically stuff like EPR is supposed to be a cookie cutter design. Actual implementation of said design has had a lot of issues, hence the escalation of costs. And it’s not easy to iron out and iterate on something that is billions of dollars a piece when a solar panel is in the thousands and a wind turbine is in the millions.
    - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
      It’s just that solar panels can be imported from China without needing a skilled specialist workforce. Yey free market But nuclear has to be built here, and we in the west suck (especially UK/US, France still holding out) at building any big infrastructure without cost overruns. ‘Free market’ doesn’t like the risks of large, hard to finance, one off projects. And our governments have decided that if central planning doesn’t work, then they don’t need to plan anything at all. Combine that with lack of skilled staff workforce as all the people who built previous nuclear powerplants have already retired and the western firms wage war against their own skilled engineers, and you have a toxic cocktail. TL SR: the only reason Small Module Reactors are interesting is because they could be made in China and imported by our lazy system
godelski 2y ago
Failure in one endeavour doesn't predict failure in another. You're making the same logical error you're accusing others of. But if you'd like to know, it's because there's a frequent association between the two. But truthfully I think people use "Greenpeace" as a stand in for any environmentally focused organization because it's the one they're most familiar with. There is direct connection with the nuclear case, but as another user points out the Sierra Nevada Club has uncontestable bias given that there are records showing that they took money from natural gas companies to support their anti nuclear campaigns. (I'm unsure if there's as clear evidence for GP. Maybe someone could link. I'm aware of indirect evidence but if someone has financial statements -- like we have with SNC -- I'd appreciate that) As for why might success in whaling be different than nuclear? For one, whaling was already a huge established industry, while nuclear was budding. I think that's a key difference you can't ignore. Not to mention that whaling doesn't have a direct connection to bombs, not to mention that biggest bombs we've ever made.... Importantly, I think you're also undermining the success of their anti whaling campaigns. Synthetic oils almost certainly had a larger impact but it wouldn't be surprising if their efforts helped accelerate the adoption. Whaling might not have "stopped" but it has as a global industry. As for oil, well, again, harder to take down a well established large industry. Especially when so much is dependent upon it and ethics gets complicated when you get into nuance (you want to shut down hospitals?). It's also a not harder to do when you fight against alternatives because they don't pass a purity test, even if they are strictly better (and by a lot).
- teachrdan 2y ago
  I think we agree on more than we don't. You're listing very reasonable reasons why Greenpeace has failed to, say, reduce our fossil fuel use to meet the Paris Accords, and why whaling hasn't been completely eradicated. (FWIW my family just got back from Norway, and there were many restaurants and stores that sold whale products for food.) Having said that, your reasons for the campaign against nuclear power include the fact that it's related to bombs, which has nothing to do with Greenpeace. You also reasonably said that "Greenpeace" is short for "environmental groups at large". To me this means that civil society in general came out against nuclear power, which lead to nuclear power being curtailed, which is... how civil society is supposed to work? If the underlying argument is "I wish people in the 1980s had a better understanding of the benefits of nuclear power plants and we had continued to build them, albeit with better safeguards" then I would 100% agree with you. But every time there is a discussion of nuclear power on HN there is a top comment blaming the current lack of it on Greenpeace. It's lazy and intellectually bankrupt. To say that civil society came out against nuclear power after two high profile disasters, due in part to mainstream environmental groups' campaigning, but also due to high construction and electricity costs, low trust in the industry, and the availability of (imperfect!) alternatives, would be much more accurate, if less exciting to upvote.
philistine 2y ago
Greenpeace has become this wholly inelegant shortcut to mean the inefficient outrage-based left-leaning movement focused on problems with small impacts on our world-ending climate problems.
gruturo 2y ago
People are not afraid of a whale dying in the middle of the ocean. Concerned, yes (maybe), but that's it. People are very much afraid of radiation thanks to a lot of misinformation, crappy movies, and yes, also to the fact that radiation is damn scary and dangerous. Greenpeace and the green parties, while meaning absolutely well, have been useful idiots who helped shape the public opinion against nuclear and effectively doom an incredibly clean competitor of coal, oil and gas. Doesn't matter - time's up. Wind and solar are now a viable alternative for generation, for a small fraction of the cost of nuclear, and if the Lithium and Sodium chemistries actually hit the implausibly low costs they are thought to be destined to, storage will also be solved before a single new nuclear plant can be built in the West. Pity, we would have a substantially less fucked planet by now.
datatrashfire 2y ago
It’s a convenient scape goat. The incredible impracticality of nuclear power is easily reducible to its immense cost vs other sources of energy. But that goes against the nerd creed of nukes smart. The marketplace long ago abandoned nuclear in favor of things that actually work.
throwaway2037 2y ago
> against commercial whaling, which still hasn't stopped more than 50 years later With the exception of a few native tribes in Canada and US, and the countries of Japan, Norway, and Iceland, I am pretty sure that all commercial whaling has stopped. And, the whaling that does remain is sustainable. If what I wrote is correct (I might have missed a country or two), I would say the campaign was successful.
solarengineer 2y ago
Not wise to generalise - I'm an HN reader and I do not think "Greenpeace is omnipotent". I used to be a Greenpeace supporter and would donate to them, even. Then I started to get harassed by their "premium donation agents" and stopped. Over the years, I have realised that they have taken up certain good causes (anti-oil, anti-whaling) but have also been rather misguided (e.g. stop all nuclear rather than argue for realistic-safe nuclear).

rockemsockem 2y ago

True, the Sierra Club has done much more to twist the opinions of green-minded folks. I think it's because Green Peace's stunts against whaling got them lots of press and made them the most famous of the green organizations.

teachrdan 2y ago
This still fails to address the fundamental question: Why do so many HNers think that environmental groups have infinite power to shape public policy around nuclear energy, while they have failed to succeed in any number of other campaigns, including ones that are more serious (climate change) and/or self-contained (commercial whaling)?
- kimixa 2y ago
  I'd suggest it's because the public discourse around these things are dominated by the talking points pushed by those same groups. They may not be the only driver of that discourse, or even the primary origin, but they're arguably the face of that viewpoint.
- realusername 2y ago
  Because being against nuclear was and still is to some extent the core idea that unites all green parties. There's nothing else they all agree on and nothing else that defines better the green vote. Because of that, the green parties in most countries sold their votes in exchange of policies against nuclear as a first priority.
  - teachrdan 2y ago
    > being against nuclear was and still is to some extent the core idea that unites all green parties Are there green groups that support whaling? Coal-fired electrical plants? Global climate change? There are any number of other problems that "green parties" have in common. Having said that, it's important to note that Greenpeace and Sierra Club are not green parties, but non-profit organizations.
    - realusername 2y ago
      > Greenpeace and Sierra Club are not green parties, but non-profit organizations. The line is much blurrier than you might think. The green parties originate directly from those movements and there's significant exchange with the non-profit world. And yes, whaling or coal plants aren't pushed as much as nuclear as a subject, that's not even close.

DrBazza 2y ago

As someone that grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s with 3 TV channels that reached the majority of the UK, Greenpeace were a fixture on mainstream news. The past was somewhat different to today.

nosianu 2y ago
That does not address the comment you reply to, which looks at actual results. All the things the comment mentioned are from that same time period too. That shows that all that exposure and "awareness" still being chased today apparently did not help to achieve an actual result. That means that you attempting to show that awareness was achieved does not contradict the parent comment.
damiankennedy 2y ago
As a New Zealander born in the 70s I very much remember Greenpeace protesting against the testing of the nuclear weapons, the snap election in 1984, the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and then becoming nuclear free in 1987. Nuclear power was never going to get of the ground in that environment. In NZ, being nuclear free is like the 2nd amendment in the US.
- DrBazza 2y ago
  Much the same in the UK. In the 1970s the BBC news programmes gave huge amounts of air time to Greenpeace and CND. Greenham Common and CND being given the most coverage. When the only source of information is a daily newspaper, or nightly news programmes, a huge number of people can be influenced by whatever a channel like the BBC was broadcasting. Unlike today where you can read wikipedia (!) or switch to one of a hundred other channels and simply just not watch the news. TV set the agenda back then, and the course of nuclear sentiment for a few decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_the_U...

pydry 2y ago

>Why are HN readers so quick to think that Greenpeace is all powerful? The nuclear lobby cant exactly blame the exhorbitant cost of nuclear power for their problems. They need a more exciting scapegoat that isnt "it's 5x the cost of the competition".

canadianfella 2y ago
[dead]
nomel 2y ago
Imagine if all the governments of the world came up with a mass produced, cookie cutter, plant, rather than starting all fabrication and design from scratch for each plant?
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Theoretically stuff like EPR is supposed to be a cookie cutter design. Actual implementation of said design has had a lot of issues, hence the escalation of costs. And it’s not easy to iron out and iterate on something that is billions of dollars a piece when a solar panel is in the thousands and a wind turbine is in the millions.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    It’s just that solar panels can be imported from China without needing a skilled specialist workforce. Yey free market But nuclear has to be built here, and we in the west suck (especially UK/US, France still holding out) at building any big infrastructure without cost overruns. ‘Free market’ doesn’t like the risks of large, hard to finance, one off projects. And our governments have decided that if central planning doesn’t work, then they don’t need to plan anything at all. Combine that with lack of skilled staff workforce as all the people who built previous nuclear powerplants have already retired and the western firms wage war against their own skilled engineers, and you have a toxic cocktail. TL SR: the only reason Small Module Reactors are interesting is because they could be made in China and imported by our lazy system

godelski 2y ago

Failure in one endeavour doesn't predict failure in another. You're making the same logical error you're accusing others of. But if you'd like to know, it's because there's a frequent association between the two. But truthfully I think people use "Greenpeace" as a stand in for any environmentally focused organization because it's the one they're most familiar with. There is direct connection with the nuclear case, but as another user points out the Sierra Nevada Club has uncontestable bias given that there are records showing that they took money from natural gas companies to support their anti nuclear campaigns. (I'm unsure if there's as clear evidence for GP. Maybe someone could link. I'm aware of indirect evidence but if someone has financial statements -- like we have with SNC -- I'd appreciate that) As for why might success in whaling be different than nuclear? For one, whaling was already a huge established industry, while nuclear was budding. I think that's a key difference you can't ignore. Not to mention that whaling doesn't have a direct connection to bombs, not to mention that biggest bombs we've ever made.... Importantly, I think you're also undermining the success of their anti whaling campaigns. Synthetic oils almost certainly had a larger impact but it wouldn't be surprising if their efforts helped accelerate the adoption. Whaling might not have "stopped" but it has as a global industry. As for oil, well, again, harder to take down a well established large industry. Especially when so much is dependent upon it and ethics gets complicated when you get into nuance (you want to shut down hospitals?). It's also a not harder to do when you fight against alternatives because they don't pass a purity test, even if they are strictly better (and by a lot).

teachrdan 2y ago
I think we agree on more than we don't. You're listing very reasonable reasons why Greenpeace has failed to, say, reduce our fossil fuel use to meet the Paris Accords, and why whaling hasn't been completely eradicated. (FWIW my family just got back from Norway, and there were many restaurants and stores that sold whale products for food.) Having said that, your reasons for the campaign against nuclear power include the fact that it's related to bombs, which has nothing to do with Greenpeace. You also reasonably said that "Greenpeace" is short for "environmental groups at large". To me this means that civil society in general came out against nuclear power, which lead to nuclear power being curtailed, which is... how civil society is supposed to work? If the underlying argument is "I wish people in the 1980s had a better understanding of the benefits of nuclear power plants and we had continued to build them, albeit with better safeguards" then I would 100% agree with you. But every time there is a discussion of nuclear power on HN there is a top comment blaming the current lack of it on Greenpeace. It's lazy and intellectually bankrupt. To say that civil society came out against nuclear power after two high profile disasters, due in part to mainstream environmental groups' campaigning, but also due to high construction and electricity costs, low trust in the industry, and the availability of (imperfect!) alternatives, would be much more accurate, if less exciting to upvote.

philistine 2y ago

Greenpeace has become this wholly inelegant shortcut to mean the inefficient outrage-based left-leaning movement focused on problems with small impacts on our world-ending climate problems.

gruturo 2y ago

People are not afraid of a whale dying in the middle of the ocean. Concerned, yes (maybe), but that's it. People are very much afraid of radiation thanks to a lot of misinformation, crappy movies, and yes, also to the fact that radiation is damn scary and dangerous. Greenpeace and the green parties, while meaning absolutely well, have been useful idiots who helped shape the public opinion against nuclear and effectively doom an incredibly clean competitor of coal, oil and gas. Doesn't matter - time's up. Wind and solar are now a viable alternative for generation, for a small fraction of the cost of nuclear, and if the Lithium and Sodium chemistries actually hit the implausibly low costs they are thought to be destined to, storage will also be solved before a single new nuclear plant can be built in the West. Pity, we would have a substantially less fucked planet by now.

datatrashfire 2y ago

It’s a convenient scape goat. The incredible impracticality of nuclear power is easily reducible to its immense cost vs other sources of energy. But that goes against the nerd creed of nukes smart. The marketplace long ago abandoned nuclear in favor of things that actually work.

throwaway2037 2y ago

> against commercial whaling, which still hasn't stopped more than 50 years later With the exception of a few native tribes in Canada and US, and the countries of Japan, Norway, and Iceland, I am pretty sure that all commercial whaling has stopped. And, the whaling that does remain is sustainable. If what I wrote is correct (I might have missed a country or two), I would say the campaign was successful.

solarengineer 2y ago

Not wise to generalise - I'm an HN reader and I do not think "Greenpeace is omnipotent". I used to be a Greenpeace supporter and would donate to them, even. Then I started to get harassed by their "premium donation agents" and stopped. Over the years, I have realised that they have taken up certain good causes (anti-oil, anti-whaling) but have also been rather misguided (e.g. stop all nuclear rather than argue for realistic-safe nuclear).