Reply to Mark Diesendorf’s letter of 20 September
Dr Diesendorf: I did not deliberately ignore your critiques, I wasn’t aware of them. I happened to notice the three recent articles that I referred to and saw that they all carried misconceptions about nuclear energy safety.
As to your contention that nuclear energy is too dangerous, you need to explain why it will be too dangerous in the future when the record shows that it has been the least dangerous form of energy in the past. It is likely to have at least some role to play in the energy transition. Note for example Microsoft’s decision to get its electricity for a data center by reopening the shuttered nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
You are right that nuclear is not necessarily complementary to wind and solar, but that is not necessary for it to have a significant role. It should not be ruled out on safety grounds, nor on cost grounds alone considering that the usual cost comparison of wind and solar to nuclear, LCOE (levelised cost of energy), is apples-to-oranges.
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