JNT000018 10/28/11

Ambio Nov 08 preprint, dr 18, 27 May 2008, DRAFT subject to further peer review/editing

The Nuclear Illusion AMORY B. LOVINS AND IMRAN SHEIKH

A widely heralded view holds that is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection. That’s all false. In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options. Yet the more decisively nuclear power is humbled by swifter and cheaper rivals, the more zealously its advocates claim it has no serious competitors. The web of old fictions1 ingeniously spun by a coordinated and intensive global campaign is spread by a credulous press and boosted by the nuclear enthusiasts who, probably for the first time ever, now happen to lead nearly all major governments at once. Many people have been misled, including four well-known individu- als with long environmental histories2—amplified by the industry’s echo box into a sham but widely believed claim of broad green endorsement—and some key legislators. As a result, the U.S. Congress in late 2007 voted $18.5 billion, and the industry will soon be back for another $30+ billion, in new loan guarantees for up to 80% of the cost of new U.S. nuclear units. And the long-pronuclear British government, abruptly reversing its well-reasoned 2002 policy, has decid- ed to replace its old nuclear plants with new ones, although, it claims, without public subsidy3—a feat no country has yet achieved. Thus policy diverges ever farther from market realities. To mind the gap between claim and fact, let’s review each step in the nuclear catechism. We’ll explore the past and future costs of new nuclear plants, what alternatives they must beat,

1 Longtime nuclear commentator Walter C. Patterson noted in 2006 that “Those suffering from nuclear amnesia have forgotten why nuclear power faded from the energy scene in the first place, how many times it has failed to deliver, how often it has disappointed its most determined advocates, how extravagantly it has squandered unparal- leled, unstinting support from taxpayers around the world, leaving them with burdens that may last for millennia.” His thorough demolition of today’s generally recycled nuclear arguments is at www.waltpatterson.org. 2 Professor James Lovelock CH CBE FRS (the venerable 88-year-old ecologist who proposed the Gaia hypothesis), Dr. Patrick Moore (a prominent organizer and officer in the 1970s), Peter Schwartz (once head of Shell Group Planning and a former Trustee of ), and his Global Business Network cofounder and colleague (creator of Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly). All are good people and the latter two are my longtime friends. Schwartz has been an energy expert. Regrettably, all four seem unaware of, or unable to deal analytically with, the realities described here, and the first two eagerly provide the nuclear industry’s green public face. No environmental group of any consequence—only industry front groups—shares their views. A brief rebuttal to Dr. Moore’s views (www.newsweek.com/id/131753) is at www.newsweek.com/id/137501. 3Actually, the Jan 2008 White Paper (http://nuclearpower2007.direct.gov.uk/docs/WhitePaper.pdf), following U.S. and French practice, says the UK Government plans to bar objections in local planning inquiries based on need and economics as having been already settled by the national consult