Nuclear Nonsense

Amory B. Lovins critiques Stewart Brand's advocacy for nuclear power, asserting that nuclear energy is economically uncompetitive and slower to deploy than decentralized renewables and efficiency measures. Lovins argues that nuclear power's high capital costs and financial risks make it a poor investment for climate protection, noting that it saves significantly less carbon per dollar and is deployed much slower than alternatives. He refutes claims regarding the necessity of 'baseload' power, the land-use footprint of renewables, and the need for a diverse energy portfolio that includes nuclear power, concluding that the technology's failure to attract private equity in the U.S. demonstrates its lack of market viability.

• Nuclear power is an inefficient tool for climate protection because it is significantly more expensive and slower to implement than energy efficiency and micropower, saving between two and 20 times less carbon per dollar and deploying 20 to 40 times slower.
• The primary failure of nuclear power is its economics, characterized by soaring capital costs and financial risk. In the U.S., new nuclear plants were found in a 2003 MIT study to be unable to compete with new coal- or gas-fired plants, and construction costs approximately tripled over the following five years.
• Renewable energy sources are more attractive to investors and more effective at adding capacity than nuclear power. In 2008, distributed renewables added 40 billion watts and received $100 billion in private investment, while nuclear added zero and received no private equity investment for 33 proposed U.S. projects between August 2005 and August 2008.
• The concept of 'baseload' power is a misconception; the grid's ability to serve steady loads is a statistical attribute of the entire mix of plants rather than a requirement for any single plant to run continuously.
• Claims that renewables have a larger land footprint than nuclear power are based on flawed measurements. When accounting for nuclear exclusion zones and the fuel chain, the land made unavailable for other uses is roughly the same for ground-mounted photovoltaics as for nuclear power, and wind power uses thousands of times less land per kWh.

APA

Lovins, A. B. (2009). Nuclear Nonsense. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2009-10_NuclearNonsense.pdf

Chicago

Lovins, Amory B. Nuclear Nonsense. RMI, 2009. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2009-10_NuclearNonsense.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Lovins |first1=Amory B. |title=Nuclear Nonsense |publisher=RMI |date=13 October 2009 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2009-10_NuclearNonsense.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{lovins2009nuclear, author = {Lovins, Amory B.}, title = {{Nuclear Nonsense}}, publisher = {RMI}, year = {2009}, month = oct, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2009-10_NuclearNonsense.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }