They campaigned HARD against nuclear usually under shadowy organizations and usually supporting solar (which, at the time, was completely infeasible). [1]
Now that we've got so many restrictions in place around nuclear and solar/wind are pretty feasible, the fossil fuel industry has done a 180. They now promote nuclear over solar/wind precisely because they know it will take years for nuclear to become viable again. [2]
They got all the regulations into place to stop nuclear from being deployed and now advocate it knowing it's going to be hard, politically, to rollback those restrictions.
Personally, I think the right move at this point is renewables + battery storage and working to eliminate nuclear restrictions. It's not an either or choice, let's do both.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...