Nuclear Power


Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry over the past fifty years have been so large in proportion to the value of the energy produced that in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less simply to buy kilowatts on the open market and give them away, according to a February 2011 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report looks at the economic impacts and policy implications of subsidies to the nuclear power industry—past, present, and proposed. February 2011

Amory Lovins: Expanding Nuclear Power Makes Climate Change Worse 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 plants, 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, which takes about half of the money, fuel, and carbon of making them separately, as we normally do. Interview on Democracy Now!, July 16, 2008

New Nuclear Power Plants Are Not a Solution for America's Energy Needs (PDF) New nuclear power plants are unlikely to provide a significant fraction of future U.S. needs for low-carbon energy. NRDC favors more practical, economical and environmentally sustainable approaches to reducing both U.S. and global carbon emissions, focusing on the widest possible implementation of end-use energy-efficiency improvements, and on policies to accelerate commercialization of clean, flexible, renewable energy technologies. NRDC, February 2007

Security Meltdown Debunking the nuclear theology. Nuclear power worsens the climate problem, because every dollar spent on costly nuclear power instead of cheaper options buys less coal displacement. For example, if a new nuclear plant delivered a kWh for only three times the cost of saving a kWh (the actual difference is typically much larger), then for the cost of your one nuclear kWh, you could have saved three kWh, tripling your carbon reduction.  By Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute, Summer 2005

Renewable Energy and Conservation

Roger Lippman's Home Page