OPINION | JEREMY GORDON
Jeremy Gordon is an independent communication consultant with 18 years of experience in the international energy industry. His company Fluent in Energy supports partners of all kinds to communicate matters of clean energy and sustainable development.
Riding the wave
The nuclear sector needs to strike now and make the most of the window of opportunity that has been presented to it
THE UNIT: Illustration copyright Alexy Kovynev
The industry has also spent too much time waiting for politicians to give renewables a try first, feeling sure that relying on the variable sources would backfire badly enough that nuclear would eventually seem the obvious choice for the world’s political leaders. Neither of those strategies worked, even though some grids and markets have been strained to breaking point by reliance on variable renewables and ambitious Net Zero pledges have been put in place with no visible means of being achieved. A third reason policymakers did not turn back to
nuclear is that the wind and solar industries grabbed their opportunity and ran with it very successfully. Innovation upon innovation has driven down their costs and they have not allowed themselves to be impeded by even their own shortcomings.
Our industry has experienced so much in its lifetime – it will surely survive this as well.
E ALL THINK THAT WHEN a problem gets bad enough, ‘someone will do something’ but in reality that time rarely, if ever, comes. The nuclear industry has fallen into this complacency
trap again and again. For a long time it expected media coverage of climate change rising with global CO2
to trigger politicians to realise they needed nuclear. 14 | February 2023 |
www.neimagazine.com levels At the end of the day, it is not renewables’ problem to
find back up for the days they don’t produce, or for the future time when gas must finally be phased out of the system. They trust that another option will be available by that time. It seems their strategy is to get as far ahead as they can while the political wind is in their favour and let someone else do something to complete the system when the time comes. Last year, however, one situation did get bad enough for someone to do something. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put energy security, and especially the costs of not having it, on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. With daily media discussion of energy and the
skyrocketing costs of gas literally hitting home, nuclear saw its popularity boosted by a few percentage points in polls
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