this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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The nuclear power industry is known for astroturfing. Just enter something like "nuclear power pros and cons" and you will find dozens of websites which only exist to advertise nuclear power.
Most of them seem to be legit enough at a first glance, but when you dig through their impressums or otherwise look up who owns the website they often belong to some group that's associate with the nuclear power industry.
I believe at least some of the die hard fans of nuclear power perhaps were convinced on these one-sided websites.
Another reason why you find so many fanboys is because on Lemmy (and similar platforms) everything considered "hard science" is cool. Even if they don't really understand it. Having reservations against or be careful with, what these people deem, technological advancement, shows that you are at least unintelligent and probably "too green".
Also, a lot of conservatives are into nuclear power reactors and they seem to have a general tendency to be extreme in their opinions.
I agree with all that but I would expand it from website to studies, there are multiple institutes that produce a few really suspicous and highly neo liberal studies from time to time and nuclear power is always in there so they have "scientific" backing as well and that often leads to legit and well researched articles with questionable information! :/
There is honestly an equal amount of astroturfing in the opposite direction to.
That doesn't make a lot of sense since no one monetarily benefits from being against nuclear power reactors.
Nuclear power's competitors sure do.
True, the legidimacy of criticism is often very questionable because you quickly land in tinfoil hat territory but only one side has a ton of money to fund scientists!