Nuclear Power and Nuclear Bombs
By Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins and Leonard Ross
Summer 1980

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future of the world depends.
-Wallace Stevens

The nuclear proliferation problem, as posed, is insoluble. All policies to control proliferation have assumed that the rapid worldwide spread of nuclear power is essential to reduce dependence on oil, economically desirable, and inevitable; that efforts to inhibit the concomitant spread of nuclear bombs must not be allowed to interfere with this vital reality; and that the international political order must remain inherently discriminatory, dominated by bipolar hegemony and the nuclear arms race. These unexamined assumptions, which artificially constrain the arena of choice and maximize the intractability of the proliferation problem, underlay the influential Ford-MITRE report and were embodied in U.S. policy initiatives under Gerald Ford and especially Jimmy Carter to slow the spread of plutonium technologies.1 Identical assumptions underlay the recently concluded multilateral two-year International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), whose lack of sympathy for those U.S. initiatives is now being cited as a political and technical rationale for dismantling what is left of them.2 Unfortunately, INFCE's assumptions were widely represented as its conclusions, ostensibly resulting from a careful assessment of alternatives which never actually took place.

Our thesis rests on a different perception. Our attempt to rethink focuses not on marginal reforms but on basic assumptions. In fact, the global nuclear power enterprise is rapidly disappearing. De facto moratoria on reactor ordering exist today in the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, and probably the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan and Canada. Nuclear power has been indefinitely deferred or abandoned in Austria, Denmark, Norway, Iran, China, Australia and New Zealand. Nuclear power elsewhere is in grave difficulties. Only in centrally planned economies, notably France and the U.S.S.R., is bureaucratic power sufficient to override, if not overcome, economic facts. The high nuclear growth forecasts that drove INFCE's endorsement of fast breeder reactors are thus mere wishful thinking. For fundamental reasons which we shall describe, nuclear power is not commercially viable, and questions of how to regulate an inexorably expanding world nuclear regime are moot...

NYT review from 1977

‘Soft’ Energy, Hard Choices
By ANTHONY J. PARISI
What passes for a national energy debate is bogged down in the Senate in what seems to be a classic confrontation between consumer and business interests. But another debate—potential- ly far more significant—is raging below the surface. It speaks to fundamental sociopolitical questions, and it centers more and more on a controversial scientist named Amory B. Lovins.

His thesis, in brief, is that the "hard" energy technologies— giant centralized electric power stations, for example—now turning the wheels of the economy must give way to "soft" technologies based on renewable sources of energy, such as solar power. But to put his position that simply makes Mr. Levin’s argument sound like just another environmentalist's plaint. In fact, he is far more than a dreamer.

Soft energy, he says, is economical as well as environmentally sensible. His thesis includes attacks on present energy inefficiencies and proposals for the optimum allocation of energy resources. And he even suggests that the nation can use the free market to gain the soft-energy path.

But the choice must be made now, he insists, before the hard- est of hard technologies—nuclear power—becomes uncontrol- lable. "The soft-energy path is the only way to come up with an intellectually consistent nonproliferation policy," he says....

Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?
By Amory B. Lovins

WHERE are America's formal or de facto energy policies leading us? Where might we choose to go instead? How can we find out?

Addressing these questions can reveal deeper questions—and a few answers—that are easy to grasp, yet rich in insight and in international relevance. This paper will seek to explore such basic concepts in energy strategy by outlining and contrasting two energy paths that the United States might follow over the next 50 years—long enough for the full implications of change to start to emerge. The first path resembles present federal policy and is essentially an extrapolation of the recent past. It relies on rapid expansion of centralized high technologies to increase supplies of energy, especially in the form of electricity. The second path combines a prompt and serious commitment to efficient use of energy, rapid development of renewable energy sources matched in scale and in energy quality to end-use needs, and special transitional fossil-fuel technologies. This path, a whole greater than the sum of its parts, diverges radically from incremental past practices to pursue long-term goals.

Both paths, as will be argued, present difficult—but very different— problems. The first path is convincingly familiar, but the economic and sociopolitical problems lying ahead loom large, and eventually, perhaps, insuperable. The second path, though it represents a shift in direction, offers many social, economic and geopolitical advantages, including virtual elimination of nuclear proliferation from the world. It is important to recognize that the two paths are mutually exclusive. Because commitments to the first may foreclose the second, we must soon choose one or the other—before failure to stop nuclear proliferation has foreclosed both.1

II
Most official proposals for future U.S. energy policy embody the twin goals of sustaining growth in energy consumption (assumed to be closely and causally linked to GNP and to social welfare) and of minimizing oil imports. The usual proposed solution is rapid expansion of three sectors: coal (mainly strip-mined, then made into electricity and synthetic fluid fuels); oil and gas (increasingly from Arctic and offshore wells); and nuclear fission (eventually in fast breeder reactors). All domestic resources, even naval oil reserves, are squeezed hard—in a policy which David Brower calls "Strength Through Exhaustion." Conservation, usually induced by price rather than by policy, is conceded to be necessary but it is given a priority more rhetorical than real. "Unconventional" energy supply is relegated to a minor role, its significant contribution postponed until past 2000. Emphasis is overwhelmingly on the short term. Long-term sustainability is vaguely assumed to be ensured by some eventual combination of fission breeders, fusion breeders, and solar electricity. Meanwhile, aggressive subsidies and regulations are used to hold down energy prices well below economic and prevailing international levels so that growth will not be seriously constrained....

Nuclear Spread: The Cure Begins at Home
Journal or Magazine Article, 1976 http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/1976-01_NuclearSpreadCureBeginsHome
In this “New York Times” op-ed, Amory Lovins commends the paper for calling attention to the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and provides further commentary about the social, political, and economic logic of pursuing a non-nuclear energy future.

Nuclear Power’s Competitive Landscape
Presentation, 2009
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-15_NuclearPowersCompetitiveLandscape

A hotly debated topic, the present and future state of nuclear power and it’s competitors is the subject of this presentation by Amory Lovins at RMI2009. This presentation was part of a plenary debate with Robert Rosner entitled, “Nuclear: Fix or Folly?” The accompanying video of the entire debate is available at http://www.rmi.org /rmi/Videos.

Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Letter, 2007
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/C07-09_NuclearPowerClimateChange
This 2007 e-mail exchange between Steve Berry (University of Chicago), Peter Bradford (former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner and senior utility regulator), and Amory Lovins illustrates the cases for and against nuclear power in relation to climate and the environment.

Nuclear Energy Debate
Journal or Magazine Article, 2001
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E01-15_NuclearEnergyDebate

In 2001, Amory and Hunter Lovins participated in a published debate about nuclear power with the editors of “USA Today.” The Lovins’ argued against nuclear power.

Nuclear Power: Economic Fundamentals and Potential Role in Climate Change Mitigation
Report or White Paper, 2005
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E05-09_NuclearPowerEconomicFundamentals

In this presentation, Amory Lovins provides evidence that low and no-carbon decentralized sources of energy have eclipsed nuclear power as a climate friendly energy option. He argues that new nuclear power plants are unfinanceable in the private capital market and that resource efficiency provides a cheaper, more environmentally viable option.

Nuclear Power: Competitive Economics and Climate Protection Potential
Presentation, 2006
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E06-04_NuclearPowerCompetitiveEconomics

In this presentation to the Royal Academy of Engineering, Amory Lovins explains the economic and environmental impacts of nuclear power. By showing that companies and governments have cut energy intensity without the use of nuclear power, Lovins shows that nuclear power is not a necessary step in the fight against climate change.



Nuclear Power: Economics and Climate-Protection Potential
Journal or Magazine Article, 2006
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E06-14_NuclearPowerEconomicsClimateProtection

This paper makes an economic argument against the use of nuclear power. The authors argue that, despite strong governmental support, nuclear power is unfinancible in the private capital market.