Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing

Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing

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Firm Power & FOAK Risk

Compressed-Gas Storage Is Still Mostly Hot Air
Bigger plants and better engineering have not fixed the weak physics, civil-engineering cost structure or poor reference-class economics.
 • Michael Barnard
My Technology Warnings Could Have Saved Investors About $100 Billion
Across a conservative set of hydrogen, eVTOL and SMR stocks, about $95B of $119B in exposed value was erased. Adding X-energy takes the tally to roughly…
 • Michael Barnard
Ontario Needs New Generation And Flexibility. Nuclear Should Compete For What Remains.
IESO sees Ontario developing an energy shortfall before a major capacity shortfall. Wind and solar can add new clean TWh quickly, while storage, hydro…
 • Michael Barnard
New Nuclear Needs The State To Make The Economics Work
New nuclear depends on state-backed finance and disciplined standardization.
 • Michael Barnard
Germany’s 6 GW Hydrogen Reservations Are Options, Not Demand
Nearly 6 GW sounds substantial until entry and exit are separated, the reservation fees are examined, and the handful of identifiable customers turn out…
 • Michael Barnard
Across 25 Power Systems, Flexibility Plans Outrun Flexible Grids
A structured, unweighted comparison finds that planning, markets and project pipelines are ahead of delivered portfolios, measured correction and…
 • Michael Barnard
Supercritical CO₂ Is Useful. The Hype Is Not.
Supercritical CO₂ works well in closed industrial niches, but power-cycle and carbon-pipeline claims still run into compression energy, infrastructure…
 • Michael Barnard
Fukushima Shows Why Nuclear Disaster Costs Do Not Stay On One Ledger
The reactor-site cleanup is only the first cost layer; evacuation, exclusion zones, replacement fuel, export impacts, public finance and decades of…
 • Michael Barnard
Nuclear Security Is A Hidden Public Cost Of Nuclear Power
Security costs stretch across regulators, weapons-adjacent agencies, intelligence, policing, international safeguards and plant sites, but only part…
 • Michael Barnard
Climate Change Is Rewriting Europe’s Nuclear Cooling Assumptions
Romania used explosives to clear the way for redirecting Danube water toward Cernavodă as heat and drought cut nuclear output when cooling demand…
 • Michael Barnard
Direct Air Capture Won’t Get Solar’s Learning Curve
DAC is industrial infrastructure, not a billion-unit manufacturing curve.
 • Michael Barnard
China’s Renewable Targets Are Floors. Its Nuclear Targets Are Aspirations.
Fifteen years of targets and delivery show why modular wind and solar repeatedly outrun plans while approved reactors struggle to become operating…
 • Michael Barnard
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