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Rod Adams Confronts Amory Lovins on Nuclear Energy

By Eric McErlain
Long-time readers know that NEI Nuclear Notes has an ongoing concern with Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute and what he has to say about nuclear energy. That's a concern that our friend Rod Adams shares as well, and it was one that he took to the source last night as he attended a lecture by Lovins just outside Washington, D.C.:
Essentially Lovins told the audience that there are free lunches, Santa Clauses, and Fairy Godmothers just waiting to provide us with all of the energy services that we need if we would just invest more into "ultralighting" our vehicle fleets, insulating our tents, and using dispersed energy sources like natural gas cogeneration, wind and solar. He talked about space age composites, plug in hybrids, and driving at reduced speeds to improve fuel economy.

He also spent about 15-20 minutes telling us that we should get rid of all of the world's nuclear power plants in order to ensure that there is no potential for hiding a weapons program in a peaceful nuclear energy program. He also implied that we should somehow exorcise nuclear knowledge so that no one has the knowhow for building weapons any more.
There's more, including a couple of gratuitous shots at the commercial nuclear industry:
[H]e described his respect for the culture of the Navy Nuclear Propulsion program. He then said it was too bad that that culture had not spread into the commercial nuclear power industry.

He then got me even more fired up by condescending expressing a belief that it was too bad that so many smart and dedicated people had wasted their lives on learning about a dead end technology.
Like Rod later mentions, I guess Lovins has never heard of INPO. I think I should repeat that nobody at NEI has anything personal against Lovins. From the very start, we've laid out a case that we disagree with his conclusions and the methodology he's used to come to those conclusions. For more, I suggest you read the following posts from our archives:

Rod Adams vs. Amory Lovins
Bad Data Leads to Bad Conclusions
More Bad Data From Amory Lovins
Revisiting RMI's Bad Data
Revisiting RMI and Amory Lovins
AECL CEO Takes on Lovins

Here's more from Rod's archive:

Lovins math continues to confuse me
Are these examples of the "micro" power that Lovins likes?
Amory Lovins' Academic Career

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