The Nuclear Illusion

The paper contends that nuclear power is experiencing a global collapse due to excessive capital costs and financial risks, making it unfinanceable in private markets. It asserts that 'negawatts' (energy efficiency) and 'micropower' (distributed renewables and cogeneration) are cheaper, faster to deploy, and more reliable alternatives. The authors argue that investing in nuclear power actually worsens climate change by diverting funds from more cost-effective carbon-reduction options. The document further claims that nuclear power fails to enhance energy security due to dependencies on foreign uranium and fuel-cycle technology, and increases proliferation risks.

• Nuclear power is economically unviable and unfinanceable in private capital markets due to excessive costs and high financial uncertainty. The authors state that no new nuclear project has been financed by private risk capital, and that the industry consistently underestimates capital costs.
• The cost of new nuclear power is significantly higher than its competitors, including coal, gas, and distributed resources. The document claims that delivered nuclear power costs between 2 and 10 times more than equivalent firm power from micropower and negawatts.
• Investing in nuclear power is less cost-effective for climate protection than investing in efficiency or renewables. The authors argue that every dollar spent on nuclear power produces 1.4 to 11+ times less carbon displacement than spending that same dollar on cheaper competitors.
• Distributed energy resources, termed 'micropower' (onsite generation and distributed renewables) and 'negawatts' (energy efficiency), are outcompeting nuclear power in scale and speed of deployment. In 2005, global micropower added 10–14 times as much capacity and 3 times as much output as global nuclear.
• Nuclear power does not effectively enhance energy security because most nuclear-using countries depend on a small number of other nations for uranium resources, fuel enrichment, or reactor parts. Furthermore, the authors argue that commercial nuclear power is the primary driver of nuclear weapons proliferation.
• The reliability of nuclear power is compromised by long refueling outages, vulnerability to heat waves that limit cooling water, and slow restart times following grid blackouts, making them 'anti-peakers'.

APA

Lovins, A. B., & Sheikh, I. (n.d.). The Nuclear Illusion. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_E08-01_NuclearIllusion-1.pdf

Chicago

Lovins, Amory B., and Imran Sheikh. The Nuclear Illusion. RMI, n.d. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_E08-01_NuclearIllusion-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Lovins |first1=Amory B. |last2=Sheikh |first2=Imran |title=The Nuclear Illusion |publisher=RMI |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_E08-01_NuclearIllusion-1.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{lovinsndnuclear, author = {Lovins, Amory B. and Sheikh, Imran}, title = {{The Nuclear Illusion}}, institution = {RMI}, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_E08-01_NuclearIllusion-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }