NEI Nuclear Notes

Three weeks ago Mr. Amory Lovins released a very pointed critique of Stewart Brand’s chapter on nuclear in Brand’s new book, Whole Earth Discipline . After reading both Brand’s and Lovins’ pieces, I understood why Lovins was so critical of Brand. It was because Brand was quite critical of Lovins in his book (p. 99): In early 2009, in Ambio magazine, Amory Lovins declared: “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete.” How can someone [Lovins] so smart be so wrong about a subject he knows so well? [Emphasis added] Ouch. It’s now clear to us why Mr. Lovins came out with his critique of Brand when he did. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been able to digest Mr. Lovins’ latest claims in his new study (pdf) and have generated quite a few thoughts to share. In Lovins’ response to Brand’s chapter on nuclear, Lovins takes Brand to task on four issues he believes are myths about nuclear: baseloa...

This is the fourth and final post from us that looks critically at the bogus claims in Amory Lovins’ latest study. “Role of Government Myth” In his new book , Stewart Brand states (p. 84) : …Energy policy is a matter of such scale, scope, speed, and patient follow-through that only a government can embrace it all. You can’t get decent grid power without decent government power. In reply, Amory Lovins asserts (p. 19, pdf): …nuclear power requires governments to mandate that it be built at public expense and without effective public participation—excluding by fiat, or crowding out by political allocation of huge capital sums, the competitors that otherwise flourish in a free market and a free society. Lovins’ response contains a contradictory claim. Lovins accuses nuclear of not being able to survive in a “free market and a free society.” Yet, several pages later, Lovins touts how wind and solar are flourishing in China while being built by state-owned power companies according...

Continuing on Friday’s critique of Amory Lovins’ latest study , our following post delves into discussing if wind and solar are baseload technologies. Funny enough, Lovins’ rebuttal of this myth completely misinterpreted what Stewart Brand said about baseload in his nuclear chapter and apparently ended up agreeing with Brand in one case. The “baseload myth” Here’s the quote from Brand’s book that the Lovins study has a problem with (p. 80 and 81): “’Baseload,’” she [Gwyneth Cravens] explains in the book, “refers to the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock, rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of customers.” … Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants. This claim ...

We are now on part five in the continuing series that seriously looks at RMI’s latest nuclear bashing paper. RMI tries extremely hard on pages 21-26 in their paper to show that nuclear plants are unreliable. Sadly for RMI, a widely publicized set of data refutes their claim: capacity factors. A capacity factor is the amount of electricity a power plant actually produces in a period of time divided by the amount of electricity the plant is rated to produce during that same period of time. A high capacity factor implies high reliability. From RMI, page 24 (pdf): Though micropower’s unreliability is an unfounded myth, nuclear power’s unreliability is all too real. In arguing that nuclear plants are unreliable, the RMI paper brings up a Union of Concerned Scientists’ report on long outages , refueling outages, heat waves , the shutdown of seven Japanese reactors due to an earthquake , and the 2003 Northeast Blackout. Other than the Japanese shutdowns, the four issues RMI brings up are al...

The third part of our series that debunks Amory Lovins’ study which criticizes Stewart Brand’s nuclear chapter discusses the need for all emission-free technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The “portfolio myth” On page 82, Brand states that : climate change is so serious a matter, we have to do everything simultaneously to head it off as much as we can . Stewart Brand backs up his statement by citing Princeton’s wedge concept which proposes that a number of different technologies will be needed to avoid CO2 emissions. Lovins, of course, doesn’t buy this (pdf, p. 17): There is no analytic basis for Brand’s assumption that all energy options are necessary, nor is it sensible. Lovins goes on to criticize Brand for misinterpreting parts of the Princeton study. As well, Lovins dings Brand for offering only one piece of evidence to back up the concept of a portfolio approach. Well, there isn’t just one piece of evidence that says we need a portfolio of technologies. The Elect...