"True believers" and "rose-tinted vision" and "spin" aren't particularly charitable phrases, either. You should engage with the opposing side's arguments instead.

Experience has taught that on the topic of nuclear power, HN is the wrong forum for that, for me. I tend to get wound up. 13years' original observation that radiation release should be compared on overall rather than "nominal" performance hasn't been contradicted in this thread, and my response to that is agreement. Others may prefer to discuss tone and comportment.

I hesitate to add anything else, but the following proposition doesn't seem to generate much discussion so perhaps it's safe. Consider the fact that regular power plants are regularly built by mostly private investment, while nuclear power plants are only built by the state. This suggests that nuclear power is not profitable in a strictly economic sense.

If you know ahead of time that a topic is going to cause you to be discourteous, that's a pretty good signal that you should avoid the topic on HN.

> Consider the fact that regular power plants are regularly built by mostly private investment, while nuclear power plants are only built by the state. This suggests that nuclear power is not profitable in a strictly economic sense.

That's quite possible, but if true, it just brings up the question of why it is not profitable. One might answer that it is not profitable because widespread public and media ignorance of the subject matter leads to NIMBY-ism that in turn makes construction too much of a hassle for private industry to bother with.

This thread seems to have been round-filed, but I think you have identified part of the problem. Significant portions of the public do not like nuclear power. It's interesting to consider the implication, that private investors are more responsive to this preference than the government that, in theory, the public elects.