It worked great in France, which had a majority renewable grid back in the early 1990s. If the rest of the developed world had invested in nuclear power during that same time frame we would have much more developed nuclear technology today. More importantly, we would’ve started emissions reductions decades ago instead of waiting for solar to become viable. We are still waiting for fundamental breakthroughs in grid-scale battery technology that will likely come too late to avoid 4C warming.
I’m not presenting environmentalists as powerful. I’m presenting them as innumerate feelers. Unfortunately that’s contagious.
Did it work great in France? The financing was so opaque it cannot be audited.
What we do know is that France can no longer do what they once maybe did. Their recent attempts to build nuclear plants have been disastrous. They've also given up on fast reactors, which is a clear tell they do not expect the world to go nuclear anytime soon (if the world did, it would quickly need breeders).
The "environmentalists did it" argument is not a good one. It falls apart when examined closely. If they were so powerful as to suppress nuclear worldwide, why can't they (for example) stop oil pipelines? Or coal combustion? The argument has all the signs of something cooked up to save a tenuous position, not because the evidence actually supports it.
Because the big coal & big oil lobbies are massively more powerful than the very meagre lobbying efforts of the nuclear industry. And yes, the greens are of course going for choking off the nuclear opponent, instead of Big Oily, not forgetting that part of the green movement does receive money from the hydrocarbon industry; the Sierra Club in the US has been funded by Cheasapeake Energy from which it receives 25 million bucks between 2007 and 2010.
For example, Greenpeace has recently successfully lobbied the Phillipne government to ban golden rice despite its obvious advantages:
I’m not presenting environmentalists as powerful. I’m presenting them as innumerate feelers. Unfortunately that’s contagious.