NUCLEAR OR NOT NUCLEAR? NOT.

Stewart Brand’s nuclear fever falls short on facts and logic
Amory Lovins, 14 October 2009 (Grist)

"I have known Stewart Brand as a friend for many years…In his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: an Ecopragmatist Manifesto (Viking), he argues that environmentalists should change their thinking about four issues: population, nuclear power, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and urbanization…Stewart recently predicted that I wouldn’t accept his nuclear reassessment. He is quite right. His nuclear chapter’s facts and logic do not hold up to scrutiny…[On] p. 104 he says, 'We Greens are not economists' and disclaims knowledge of economics…Today, most dispassionate analysts think new nuclear power plants’ deepest flaw is their economics. They cost too much to build and incur too much financial risk…That conclusion rests on empirical data about how much new nuclear electricity actually costs…

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"Rather than viewing nuclear power within this real-world competitive landscape, Stewart simply waves away its competitors…He also dismisses wind and solar power, and omits small hydro, geothermal, waste/biomass combustion, all other renewables, and cogeneration. Yet worldwide these sources make more electricity than nuclear power does, and for the past three years, have won about 10-25 times its market share and added about 20-40 times more capacity each year…Nonetheless, Stewart rejects all non-nuclear options, for four fallacious reasons…[1] Baseload: Wind and photovoltaics can’t keep the lights on because they can’t run 24/7…[2] Footprint: Photovoltaics need about 150-175 times, and wind farms from 600+ to nearly 900 times, more land than nuclear power to produce the same electricity…[3] Portfolio: We need every tool for combating climate change, including nuclear power…[4] Government role: The climate imperative trumps economics, so governments everywhere must and will do what France did—ensure that nuclear power gets built, regardless of economics or dissent…I believe each claim is unsupportable..."

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"…[1] The electricity system doesn’t rely on any plant’s ability to run continuously; rather, all plants together supply the grid, and the grid serves all loads. That’s necessary because no kind of power plant can run all the time…[T]here is not and has never been a need for any particular plant or kind of plant to run all the time, and none can. All power plants fail, varying only in their failures’ size, duration, frequency, predictability, and cause. Solar cells’ and windpower’s variation with night and weather is no different from the intermittence of coal and nuclear plants, except that it affects less capacity at once, more briefly, far more predictably, and is no harder and probably easier and cheaper to manage…Variability (predictable failure) and intermittence (unpredictable failure) must be managed by diversifying type and location, forecasting, and integrating with other resources. Utilities do this every day…Even with a largely (or probably a wholly) renewable grid, this is not a significant problem or cost…"

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"…[2] Stewart understates nuclear power’s land-use by about 43-fold by omitting all land used by exclusion zones and the nuclear fuel chain. Conversely, he includes the space between wind or solar equipment—unused land commonly used for farming, grazing, wildlife, and recreation. That’s like claiming that two lampposts require a parking lot’s worth of space, even though 99% of the lot is used for parking, driving, and walking. Properly measured, per kilowatt-hour produced, the land made unavailable for other uses is about the same for ground-mounted photovoltaics as for nuclear power, sometimes less—or zero, for building-mounted PVs sufficient to power the world many times over. Land actually used per kWh is up to thousands of times smaller for windpower than for nuclear power…"

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"…[3] The one paper [Brand] cites as proof that we need all energy options (Pacala & Socolow’s Stabilization Wedges) actually says the opposite. There is no analytic basis for his conclusion, and there’s strong science to the contrary. We can’t afford to stuff our energy portfolio indiscriminately with some of everything, and we shouldn’t: some options are less worthy and effective than others. The more you fear climate change, the more judiciously you should invest to get the most solution per dollar and per year. Nuclear flunks both these tests."

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"…[4] If nuclear power isn’t needed, worsens climate change (vs. more effective solutions) and energy security, and can’t compete in the marketplace despite uniquely big subsidies—all evidence-based findings unexamined in Stewart’s chapter—then his nuclear imperative evaporates. Of course, a few countries with centrally planned energy systems, mostly with socialized costs, are building reactors: over two-thirds of all nuclear plants under construction are in China, Russia, India, or South Korea. But that’s more because their nuclear bureaucracies dominate national energy policy…Nuclear power requires such a system. The competitors beating nuclear power thrive in democracies and free markets…"