The tinfoil hat theory is this: Nuclear is expensive and takes forever to build. Right now there is a lot of effort and money pushing for renewable energy sources, and it has been immensely successful at proving its viability. Certain groups make a lot of money off fossil fuels, and even though they know that will eventually end, every year they can delay that end is billions in their pocket.
The push for "we shouldn't do renewables, because they can't do the job, so we should invest in nuclear" is about taking the wind out of renewable's sails. Even if we turn around today and start building a hundred nuclear plants all over the world, it will take decades for them to come online and start displacing fossil fuel energy production, meaning a long delay until fossil fuels stop putting billions into the pockets of certain people. They do this because even at the half assed effort we have now, renewable power generation is increasing by tens of terawatts per year in germany alone.
This is why the same people who DGAF about all the carbon we release into the atmosphere and all the pollution we dump into rivers suddenly "care" about "windmills kill birds", why conservative states like Florida, with ample sun, continue to push for laws that screw over home solar.
Nuclear is mostly carbon neutral energy, which is great, but if we wanted to solve climate change with nuclear energy, we needed to start building it in the 70s, when all the pushback happened. Unlike most other situations, the second best time to build nuclear is not today. Maybe it will be good to have it in the mix in the future, but we can't let it distract us from the renewable energy sources that have the potential to decarbonize our world before even the first new nuclear plant could come online.
It also might not even be cost competitive anyway.
> Even if we turn around today and start building a hundred nuclear plants all over the world, it will take decades for them to come online and start displacing fossil fuel energy production
A. Construction start to finish is well under a decade.
B. This concern is true of any alternative energy source.
> The push for "we shouldn't do renewables, because they can't do the job, so we should invest in nuclear" is about taking the wind out of renewable's sails.
The push against nuclear is to line the pockets of renewable companies, and exploits the layman's misunderstanding about environment impact of nuclear and its alternatives.
There are just as many manipulative, disingenous arguments by Big Oil as by Big Renewable.
Not really. Building the plant, and mining+refining the nuclear fuel involves a significant amount of emissions. Far more than most renewables have on the list. Overall it's greener than fossil fuels, but less green than renewables. And we are at the point where such differences matter. And that is not the only problem with nuclear. The high costs and the political problems are another things. Russia has their hands deep in nuclear fuels too.
