Publication Laka-library:
Four nuclear myths. A commentary on Brand’s ‘Whole Earth Discipline’ and on similar writings
Author | Amory Lovins, RMI |
6-01-2-16-61.pdf | |
Date | October 2009 |
Classification | 6.01.2.16/61 (NP & GREENHOUSE EFFECT - NUCLEAR POWER YES OR NO SOLUTION & SCENARIOS) |
Front |
From the publication:
Four Nuclear Myths 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 papers1–5, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 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 2–20 times less carbon per