http://rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

A commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on similar writings
AMORY B. LOVINS, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF SCIENTIST, ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE
13 October 2009

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little  or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload” – able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more  than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart Brand’s 2009 book “Whole Earth Discipline,” which encapsulates similar views widely expressed and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document why expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s because the empirical cost and installation data show new nuclear power is so costly and slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 220 times less carbon per dollar, and about 2040 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market winners – efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,” comprising distributed renewables (renewables with mass-produced units, i.e., those other than big hydro dams) and cogenerating electricity together with useful heat in factories and buildings.

These economic arguments are the core of any rational nuclear debate, because if nuclear power isn’t necessary, competitive, and effective at climate protection, then one needn’t debate its other attributes. Readers are therefore invited to explore the cited papers, starting with ref. 4.

Typically of such writings, Brand’s alternatives to nuclear and coal power comprise only:

• energy efficiency – praised but quickly dismissed, without analysis, as insufficient by itself to replace all existing coal plants and all future developing-country power needs;
• solar thermal electric power (normally with overnight heat storage), mentioned but not analyzed despite its very large competitive potential; and
• windpower and photovoltaics, both rejected on the flawed bases described below.

Other than a mention of big hydro dams, his slate of climate alternatives arbitrarily excludes:

• all other renewables, even though dispatchable renewables (those operable whenever desired and with high technical reliability) – small hydro, geothermal, biomass/waste combustion, etc. – now have about the same global installed capacity as photovoltaics plus windpower, but greater annual output because they have higher capacity factors;
• cogeneration (combined-heat-and-power), which is larger today than distributed renewables, has vast further potential, and avoids or eliminates carbon emissions at similar or lower cost (it typically saves at least the normal fuel, carbon, and money); and
• fuel-switching, which could cheaply displace one-third of U.S. coal-fired power now.