Science Forums 2

[REASON]

I hate to be a thorn, but I recently listened to an interview on Democracy Now! with Amory Lovins, who:

has been described as “one of the Western world’s most influential energy thinkers.” He’s also a leading opponent of nuclear power. Amory Lovins is co-founder, chair and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. He is a consultant physicist, MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of numerous awards, including the Right Livelihood Award. Lovins advised the energy and other industries in countries around the world, including here in the US. He invented the hybrid Hypercar in ’91 and has written twenty-nine books, including Soft Energy Paths, Natural Capitalism, Small Is Profitable, and Winning the Oil Endgame.

Here is what he had to say on the Program.

Democracy Now! | Amory Lovins: Expanding Nuclear Power Makes Climate Change Worse

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, talk about nuclear power. Why do you feel it’s not an option, given the oil crisis?

AMORY LOVINS: Well, first of all, electricity and oil have essentially nothing to do with each other, and anybody who thinks the contrary is really ignorant about energy. Less than two percent of our electricity is made from oil. Less than two percent of our oil makes electricity. Those numbers are falling. And essentially, all the oil involved is actually the heavy, gooey bottom of the barrel you can’t even make mobility fuels out of anyway.

What nuclear would do is displace coal, our most abundant domestic fuel. And this sounds good for climate, but actually, expanding nuclear makes climate change worse, for a very simple reason. Nuclear is incredibly expensive. The costs have just stood up on end lately. Wall Street Journal recently reported that they’re about two to four times the cost that the industry was talking about just a year ago. And the result of that is that if you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about twenty to forty times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas, all kinds of central plans, in the marketplace. And those competitors are efficient use of electricity and what’s called micropower, which is both renewables, except big hydro, and making electricity and heat together, in fact, recent buildings, which takes about half of the money, fuel and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do.

So, nuclear cannot actually deliver the climate or the security benefits claimed for it. It’s unrelated to oil. And it’s grossly uneconomic, which means the nuclear revival that we often hear about is not actually happening. It’s a very carefully fabricated illusion. And the reason it isn’t happening is there are no buyers. That is, Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies.....

I am not very knowledgeable on this subject, but I think his concerns should be addressed in this thread.