Michael Barnard
1 min readAug 12, 2021

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To your point on safety, I believe you missed me stating exactly that, that nuclear reactors were relatively safe technically, and that it was operation and maintenance hygiene and security that were the problems.

To your point on throwing solutions at the problem of climate change, regardless of cost, I disagree. While our economy is not a zero sum game, if there are clearly better, cheaper and faster solutions, we can achieve more more quickly with them than much slower alternatives. Nuclear generation takes a median of a decade from start of construction to commissioning, and in that decade we could have commissioned 3x the actual annual generation in the first three years with wind or solar, and then repeated it three times. Wind and solar deliver climate value much faster and much more cheaply. Further, nuclear regulatory burden, necessary due to ensuring good technologies and good hygiene in operations and maintenance, means that some of the same organizations responsible for moving forward wind and solar are distracted by nuclear, their resources split.

Business casing solutions to maximize value and speed is reasonable. Throwing money and resources at much more expensive and slower technologies which do not provide unique value is not reasonable, and nuclear generation doesn't make special flavors of electricity.

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Michael Barnard
Michael Barnard

Written by Michael Barnard

Climate futurist and advisor. Founder TFIE. Advisor FLIMAX. Podcast Redefining Energy - Tech.

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