SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
https://www.yahoo.com/news/switzerland-votes-phase-nuclear-energy-121710224.html
Swiss voters have backed government plans to replace the power from ageing nuclear reactors with renewable energy.
A total of 58.2 per cent of voters supported the phaseout of nuclear energy in a binding referendum on Sunday. Under the Swiss system of direct democracy, voters have the final say on major policy issues.
The plan will provide billions of pounds in subsidies for renewable energy, ban the construction of nuclear plants and decommission the country’s five existing ones, which produce about a third of the country’s electricity.
[...] The move echoes efforts across Europe to reduce dependence on nuclear energy and has been in the making following Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. Germany has announced it will close all nuclear plants by 2022 and Austria banned it decades ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:36AM
In my opinion there is an astroturfing campaign in effect to try to frame nuclear as a standard right wing view. I generally post on more conservative sites to try to keep myself balanced, and have noticed a sharp spike -out of nowhere- amount of pro-nuclear propaganda, for lack of a more nuanced term. It's also generally framed in a sharply partisan fashion, "leftists are anti-science"/anti-energy, etc. There's 0 basis in reality for the position, but I think the number 1 rule of American politics is that frame things in a political fashion and people turn into mind-blanked followers.
At the same time there is an intentional misinformation campaign about renewables being propagated. For instance cloudy days are supposed to drop the output of solar percent to near 0%, even under optimal conditions a solar panel might be enough to keep a flash light turned on, etc. The entire rhetoric is trying to formulate some sort of a machismo 'nuclear is for men', 'renewables are for soy latte sippin' tree huggers.'