Another Feeble-Headed Nuke Drops Dead

[kristopher]

...For years "expert" reactor backers have touted the "Pebble Bed" design as an "inherently safe" alternative to traditional domed light water models. Now its South African developers say they're done pouring money into it.

The Pebble Bed's big idea was to create a critical mass of uranium particles coated with silicon carbide and encased in graphite. These intensely radioactive "pebbles" would seethe in a passive container, cooled by helium. Without the need for a containment dome, the super-heated mass would produce both heat and electricity. Touted as needing no back-up emergency systems to prevent a major disaster, the plan was to mass-produce these "smaller, simpler" reactors for use throughout the industrial world.

...But the South African government has now cut off funding for the project. Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan has told the National Assembly that "sobering realities" included the lack of working demonstration model, the lack of customers, the lack of a major investment partner and the impending demand for $4.2 billion in new investment capital. As deadlines consistently slipped, Westinghouse withdrew from the project in May.

South African officials say the US and China are still working on the technology. But with no one seriously committed to building a prototype, any tangible future Pebble Bed might have as a major source of new energy is largely imaginary. Critics ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-wasserman/another-feebleheaded-nuke_b_736214.html

[Systematic Chaos]

1. R.I.P. Mr. Jacobson

:cry:

[Warpy]

2. In the meantime, India is working on thorium reactors

which don't produce nearly as much plutonium and weapons grade uranium that uranium reactors do. The potential for disastrous accidents is still there, and they can't be considered a clean source of energy by any stretch of the imagination, but they do slightly reduce the chances for nuclear proliferation while producing less waste material. They might be viable as a stopgap source of energy while they keep trying to bring fusion enough under control to make it viable for energy generation.

In any case, someone else is already doing much of the R&D on them.

The demise of the pebble reactor model is not surprising, though. In addition, the world is still a little nervous about any reactor system that uses graphite since Chernobyl, even though the processes are totally different.

[TheMadMonk]

5. The potential for accidents in handling are always possible. However,...

...as far as a runaway nuclear excursion is concerned thorium is a non-starter. The reactors are first of all unpressurised so there can be no steam explosion creating a plume to carry radioactive materials up into the atmosphere. The fuel is a liquefied salt if it overheats it expands into narrow channels where the rate of fission slows and the fuel cools down. If it seriously overheats, well before any catastrophic failure can occur plugs in the bottom of the reactor vessel melt and the entire fuel load it dumped into a number of small storage tanks.

I would not be surprised to discover that the working fluid (another molten salt) used to transfer heat from the reactor to the steam generators isn't chosen to "poison" the nuclear reaction in case the two somehow come into physical contact.

Virtually all dangers inherrent in the thorium fuel cycle and the reactors that run on it are the same ones that plague the handling of any toxic materials. It's a known problem, there will of course be special quirks unique to the materials being processed, there always are. However, we manage it every day with megatons of amonia, lovely substances such as hydrofluric acid and hydrogen cyanide and worse, much worse.

Furthermore the opportunity for accidents is at least in part down to the simple fact that quanties involved today are so small that it is cheaper to use human handlers than to devise the same sort of automation of processes practiced by industries like petrochemicals, construction materials, mining and so forth. Plus of course so much of it's still at the research stage so automation is not realistically feasible.

A shift from active to passive safety systems combined with emerging ecconomies of scale and other incentives to remove as much manual handling as possible from the fuel loop. Plus several demonstrated ideas for systems for actual waste disposal and not just tucking it safely away for a geological age. The science and theory is done and sound. Everything else is engineering.

Even with business as usual, it is possible to easily demonstrate that the new threats introduced by a 100% shift to nuclear power would cause far fewer deaths than are currently caused by fossil fuels. With advances, such as those in the paragraph above, the appreciable statistical threat (ie. to you and me) drops to near zero with no chance whatsoever of actual radiological disaster.

Of course I'm not calling for anything like a 100% shift. What I do think is necessary, is putting an end to this ridiculous search for a "perfect" solution. We need them all. Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal AND nuclear.

The pebble bed concept is perfectly sound. The single biggest problem there IIRC is that producing flawless fuel pellets in sufficient quantity is simply ecconomically unfeasible at this time.

Thorium may run into it's own insurmountable barriers and progress has indeed been slow, however it has been steady enough that it continues to attract attention. The superpowers didn't abandon thorium because of difficulty, they abandoned it because the rate at which non-fissile Th233 is converted into Fissile U233 is far slower than that which U238 can be converted into Pu239. One Fast breeder reactor can produce several bombs' worth of plutonium per year, hence the "fast". A thorium reactor produces enough for 1/10th of a bomb per year. Perfect for a partially closed low volume fuel cycle and enough to kickstart more reactors as they are built, but waaaaaay too slow for weapon production.

[Warpy]

12. Thanks for your thoughts

and I was unaware that the Achilles' heel of the pebble bed technology was in production of the "pebbles," themselves. My nuclear physicist uncle isn't around any more and I haven't been able to pick his brains.

I said downthread that uranium vs. thorium was the difference between being shot in the head and being choked to death--you might escape the throttling. That would seem to be an apt comparison.

[bananas]

7. No - India would rather build bombs than generate electricity

Before Bush's "Nukes-for-Mangoes" deal,
India was running its reactors at half-power because of uranium shortages,
but they still wouldn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
they would rather make nuclear weapons than generate electricity.
They absolutely will be able to make nuclear weapons using the thorium reactors they're working on.

http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/pages_us_en/blog/blog/blog.php?onepost=1&post_id=6

India: Living Beyond its Nuclear Means
posted by M. V. Ramana on Nov 1st, 2007

On Monday, 21 October, S. K. Jain, the head of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited announced that uranium fuel shortages had led to five of India’s 17 nuclear power plants being shut down and the rest were now, on average, at half power.

This crisis is no surprise. India has to rely on limited, poor quality, domestic uranium to both fuel its nuclear reactors, except for two very old imported U.S. reactors for which it is occasionally able to import fuel, and to produce material for its nuclear weapons program, and there is not enough to go around. Over the last few years, fuel shortages have forced the capacity factors of Indian nuclear power plants to fall from an average of about 75% in 2003-04 to 56% in 2006-07. The Department of Atomic Energy has been trying to open up many new mines around the country, but has been meeting stiff local opposition on environmental, public health, and social grounds.

The roots of the problem are long-standing international efforts to stem proliferation through the adoption of export control norms, Indian determination to pursue its nuclear weapons program, and poor planning by the managers of the Indian atomic complex.

<snip>

http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/power-weapons/thorium/

Thorium and WMD proliferation risks
by Jim Green — last modified 2010-02-27 23:11

The use of thorium as a nuclear fuel doesn't solve the WMD proliferation problem. Irradiation of thorium (indirectly) produces uranium-233, a fissile material which can be used in nuclear weapons.

The US has successfully tested weapons using uranium-233 (and France may have too).

India's thorium program must have a WMD component − as evidenced by India's refusal to allow IAEA safeguards to apply to its thorium program.

Thorium fuelled reactors could also be used to irradiate uranium to produce weapon grade plutonium. The possible use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium to initiate a thorium-232/uranium-233 reaction, or proposed systems using thorium in conjunction with HEU or plutonium as fuel, present further risks of diversion of HEU or plutonium for weapons production as well as providing a rationale for the ongoing operation of dual-use enrichment and reprocessing plants.

<snip>

http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/thorium2009factsheet.pdf

Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power
By Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd

<snip>

Contrary to the claims made or implied by thorium proponents, however, thorium doesn’t
solve the proliferation, waste, safety, or cost problems of nuclear power, and it still faces
major technical hurdles for commercialization.

<snip>

Not a Proliferation Solution

Thorium is not actually a “fuel” because it is not fissile and therefore cannot be used to start or sustain a nuclear chain reaction. A fissile material, such as uranium-235 (U-235) or plutonium-239 (which is made in reactors from uranium-238), is required to kick-start the reaction. The enriched uranium fuel or plutonium fuel also maintains the chain reaction until enough of the thorium target material has been converted into fissile uranium-233 (U-233) to take over much or most of the job. An advantage of thorium is that it absorbs slow neutrons relatively efficiently (compared to uranium-238) to produce fissile uranium-233. The use of enriched uranium or plutonium in thorium fuel has proliferation implications. Although U-235 is found in nature, it is only 0.7 percent of natural uranium, so the proportion of U-235 must be industrially increased to make “enriched uranium” for use in reactors. Highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are nuclear weapons materials.

In addition, U-233 is as effective as plutonium-239 for making nuclear bombs. In most proposed thorium fuel cycles, reprocessing is required to separate out the U-233 for use in fresh fuel. This means that, like uranium fuel with reprocessing, bomb-making material is separated out, making it vulnerable to theft or diversion. Some proposed thorium fuel cycles even require 20% enriched uranium in order to get the chain reaction started in existing reactors using thorium fuel. It takes 90% enrichment to make weapons‐usable
uranium, but very little additional work is needed to move from 20% enrichment to 90% enrichment. Most of the separative work is needed to go from natural uranium, which has 0.7% uranium-235 to 20% U-235.

It has been claimed that thorium fuel cycles with reprocessing would be much less of a proliferation risk because the thorium can be mixed with uranium-238. In this case, fissile uranium-233 is also mixed with non-fissile uranium-238. The claim is that if the uranium-238 content is high enough, the mixture cannot be used to make bombs without a complex uranium enrichment plant. This is misleading. More uranium-238 does dilute the uranium-233, but it also results in the production of more plutonium-239 as the reactor operates. So the proliferation problem remains – either bomb-usable uranium-233 or bomb-usable plutonium is created and can be separated out by reprocessing.

Further, while an enrichment plant is needed to separate U-233 from U-238, it would take less separative work to do so than enriching natural uranium. This is because U-233 is five atomic weight units lighter than U-238, compared to only three for U-235. It is true that such enrichment would not be a straightforward matter because the U-233 is contaminated with U-232, which is highly radioactive and has very radioactive radionuclides in its decay chain. The radiation-dose-related problems associated with separating U-233 from U-238 and then handling the U-233 would be considerable and more complex than enriching natural uranium for the purpose of bomb making. But in principle, the separation can be done, especially if worker safety is not a primary concern; the resulting U-233 can be used to make bombs. There is just no way to avoid proliferation problems associated with thorium fuel cycles that involve reprocessing. Thorium fuel cycles without reprocessing would offer the same temptation to reprocess as today’s once-through uranium fuel cycles.

<snip>

[bananas]

8. No, nuclear isn't needed as a "stop-gap"

None of the major environmental organizations support nuclear as a solution for global warming, and most are against it.
Here are two examples, the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists:

http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/conservation/nuc-power.aspx

Sierra Club Conservation Policies
Nuclear Power

The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process, pending:

1. Development of adequate national and global policies to curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth.
2. Resolution of the significant safety problems inherent in reactor operation, disposal of spent fuels, and possible diversion of nuclear materials capable of use in weapons manufacture.
3. Establishment of adequate regulatory machinery to guarantee adherence to the foregoing conditions. The above resolution does not apply to research reactors.

<snip>

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/ucs-position-on-nuclear-power.html

UCS Position on Nuclear Power and Global Warming

<snip>

In this context, the Union of Concerned Scientists contends that:

1. Prudence dictates that we develop as many options to reduce global warming emissions as possible, and begin by deploying those that achieve the largest reductions most quickly and with the lowest costs and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet these criteria.

2. Nuclear power is not the silver bullet for "solving" the global warming problem. Many other technologies will be needed to address global warming even if a major expansion of nuclear power were to occur.

3. A major expansion of nuclear power in the United States is not feasible in the near term. Even under an ambitious deployment scenario, new plants could not make a substantial contribution to reducing U.S. global warming emissions for at least two decades.

4. Until long-standing problems regarding the security of nuclear plants—from accidents and acts of terrorism—are fixed, the potential of nuclear power to play a significant role in addressing global warming will be held hostage to the industry's worst performers.

5. An expansion of nuclear power under effective regulations and an appropriate level of oversight should be considered as a longer-term option if other climate-neutral means for producing electricity prove inadequate. Nuclear energy research and development (R&D) should therefore continue, with a focus on enhancing safety, security, and waste disposal.

[kristopher]

9. Nuclear pushers rush from one discredited technology to another

Nuclear pushers rush from one discredited technology to another, and Lovins charts how they race from one design to the next as their claims of "This is THE solution!!" are confronted with and by reality.


Open Access article

"New" Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story
By Amory B. Lovins
Originally published in Solutions Journal, Spring 2009

The dominant type of new nuclear power plant, light-water reactors (LWRs), proved unfinanceable in the robust 2005–08 capital market, despite new U.S. subsidies approaching or exceeding their total construction cost. New LWRs are now so costly and slow that they save 2–20× less carbon, 20–40× slower, than micropower and efficient end-use.1 As this becomes evident, other kinds of reactors are being proposed instead—novel designs claimed to solve LWRs' problems of economics, proliferation, and waste.2 Even climate-protection pioneer Jim Hansen says these “Gen IV” reactors merit rapid R&D.3 But on closer examination, the two kinds most often promoted— Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs) and thorium reactors4—reveal no economic, environmental, or security rationale, and the thesis is unsound for any nuclear reactor.

Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs)
The IFR—a pool-type, liquid-sodium-cooled fast-neutron5 reactor plus an ambitious new nuclear fuel cycle—was abandoned in 1994,6 and General Electric's S-PRISM design in ~2003, due to both proliferation concerns and dismal economics. Federal funding for fast breeder reactors7 halted in 1983, but in the past few years, enthusiasts got renewed Bush Administration support by portraying IFRs as a solution to proliferation and nuclear waste. It’s neither.

Fast reactors were first offered as a way to make more plutonium to augment and ultimately replace scarce uranium. Now that uranium and enrichment are known to get cheaper while reprocessing, cleanup, and nonproliferation get costlier—destroying the economic rationale— IFRs have been rebranded as a way to destroy the plutonium (and similar transuranic elements) in long-lived radioactive waste. Two or three redesigned IFRs could in principle fission the plutonium produced by each four LWRs without making more net plutonium. However, most LWRs will have retired before even one commercial-size IFR could be built; LWRs won’t be replaced with more LWRs because they’re grossly uncompetitive; and IFRs with their fuel cycle would cost even more and probably be less reliable. It’s feasible today to “burn” plutonium in LWRs, but this isn’t done much because it’s very costly, makes each kg of spent fuel 7× hotter, enhances risks, and makes certain transuranic isotopes that complicate operation. IFRs could do the same thing with similar or greater problems, offering no advantage over LWRs in proliferation resistance, cost, or environment.

IFRs’ reprocessing plant, lately rebranded a “recycling center,” would be built at or near the reactors, coupling them so neither works without the other. Its novel technology, replacing solvents and aqueous chemistry with high-temperature pyrometallurgy and electrorefining, would incur different but major challenges, greater technical risks and repair problems, and speculative but probably worse economics. (Argonne National Laboratory the world's experts on it, contracted to pyroprocess spent fuel from EBR-II — a small IFR-like test reactor shut down in 1994—by 2035, at a cost DOE estimated in 2006 at ~50× today's cost of fresh LWR fuel.)

Reprocessing of any kind makes waste management more difficult and complex, increases the volume and diversity of waste streams, increases by several- to many fold the cost of nuclear fueling, and separates bomb-usable material that can’t be adequately measured or protected. Mainly for this last reason, all Presidents since Gerald Ford in 1976 (except G.W. Bush in 2006–08) discouraged it. An IFR/pyroprocessing system would give any country immediate access to over a thousand bombs’ worth of plutonium to fuel it, facilities to recover that plutonium, and experts to separate and fabricate it into bomb cores—hardly a path to a safer world.

IFRs might in principle offer some safety advantages over today’s light-water reactors, but create different safety concerns, including the sodium coolant’s chemical reactivity and radioactivity. Over the past half-century, the world’s leading nuclear technologists have built about three dozen sodium-cooled fast reactors, 11 of them Naval. Of the 22 whose histories are mostly reported, over half had sodium leaks, four suffered fuel damage (including two partial meltdowns), several others had serious accidents, most were prematurely closed, and only six succeeded. Admiral Rickover canceled sodium-cooled propulsion for USS Seawolf in 1956 as “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.” Little has changed. As Dr. Tom Cochran of NRDC notes, fast reactor programs were tried in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the USSR, and the US and Soviet Navies. All failed. After a half-century and tens of billions of dollars, the world has one operational commercial-sized fast reactor (Russia's BN600) out of 438 commercial power reactors, and it's not fueled with plutonium.

IFRs are often claimed to “burn up nuclear waste” and make its "time of concern...less than 500 years" rather than 10,000–100,000 years or more. That's wrong: most of the radioactivity comes from fission products, including very long-lived isotopes like iodine-129 and technetium-99, and their mix is broadly similar in any nuclear fuel cycle.

IFRs' wastes may contain less transuranics, but at prohibitive cost and with worse occupational exposures, routine releases, accident and terrorism risks, proliferation, and disposal needs for intermediate- and low-level wastes. It's simply a dishonest fantasy to claim, as a Wall Street Journal op-ed just did,8 that such hypothetical and uneconomic ways to recover energy or other value from spent LWR fuel mean “There is no such thing as nuclear waste.” Of course, the nuclear industry wishes this were true.

No new kind of reactor is likely to be much, if at all, cheaper than today's LWRs, which remain grossly uncompetitive and are getting more so despite five decades of
maturation.


“New reactors” are precisely the “paper reactors” Admiral Rickover described in 1953:

An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics:
(1) It is simple.
(2) It is small.
(3) It is cheap.
(4) It is light.
(5) It can be built very quickly.
(6) It is very flexible in purpose.
(7) Very little development will be required. It will use off the shelf components.
(8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.

On the other hand a practical reactor can be distinguished by the following characteristics:
(1) It is being built now.
(2) It is behind schedule.
(3) It requires an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items.
(4) It is very expensive.
(5) It takes a long time to build because of its engineering development problems.
(6) It is large.
(7) It is heavy.
(8) It is complicated.

Every new type of reactor in history has been costlier, slower, and harder than projected. IFRs’ low pressure, different safety profile, high temperature, and potentially higher thermal efficiency (if its helium turbines didn’t misbehave as they have in all previous reactor projects) come with countervailing disadvantages and costs that advocates assume away, contrary to all experience.

Thorium reactors
Some enthusiasts prefer fueling reactors with thorium—an element 3× as abundant as uranium but even more uneconomic to use. India has for decades failed to commercialize breeder reactors to exploit its thorium deposits.

But thorium can’t fuel a reactor by itself: rather, a uranium- or plutonium-fueled reactor can convert thorium-232 into fissionable (and plutonium-like, highly bomb-usable) uranium-233. Thorium’s proliferation,9 waste, safety, and cost problems differ only in detail from uranium’s: e.g., thorium ore makes less mill waste, but highly radioactive U-232 makes fabricating or reprocessing U-233 fuel hard and costly. And with uranium-based nuclear power continuing its decades-long economic collapse, it’s awfully late to be thinking of developing a whole new fuel cycle whose problems differ only in detail from current versions.

Spent LWR fuel “burned” in IFRs, it’s claimed, could meet all humanity’s energy needs for centuries. But renewables and efficiency can do that forever at far lower cost, with no proliferation, nuclear wastes, or major risks.10 Moreover, any new type of reactor would probably cost even more than today’s models: even if the nuclear part of a new plant were free, the rest—two-thirds of its capital cost—would still be grossly uncompetitive with any efficiency and most renewables, sending out a kilowatt-hour for ~9–13¢/kWh instead of new LWRs’ ~12–18+¢. In contrast, the average U.S. windfarm completed in 2007 sold its power (net of a 1¢/kWh subsidy that’s a small fraction of nuclear subsidies) for 4.5¢/kWh. Add ~0.4¢ to make it dispatchable whether the wind is blowing or not and you’re still under a nickel delivered to the grid.
Most other renewables also beat new thermal power plants too, cogeneration is often comparable or cheaper, and efficiency is cheaper than just running any nuclear- or fossil-fueled plant. Obviously these options would also easily beat proposed fusion reactors that are sometimes claimed to be comparable to today’s fission reactors in size and cost. And unlike any kind of hypothetical fusion or new fission reactor—or LWRs, which have a market share below 2%—efficiency and micropower now provide at least half the world’s new electrical services, adding tens of times more capacity each year than nuclear power does. It’s a far bigger gamble to assume that the nuclear market loser will become a winner than that these winners will turn into losers.

Small reactors
Toshiba claims to be about to market a 200-kWe nuclear plant (~5000× smaller than today's norm); a few startup firms like Hyperion Power Generation aim to make 10¢/kWh electricity from miniature reactors for which it claims over 100 firm orders. Unfortunately, 10¢ is the wrong target to beat: the real competitor is not other big and costly thermal power plants, but micropower and negawatts, whose delivered retail cost is often ~1–6¢/kWh.11 Can one imagine in principle that mass-production, passive operation, automation (perhaps with zero operating and security staff), and supposedly failsafe design might enable hypothetical small reactors to approach such low costs?

No, for two basic reasons:

• Nuclear reactors derive their claimed advantages from highly concentrated sources of heat, and hence also of radiation. But the shielding and thermal protection needed to contain that concentrated energy and exploit it (via turbine cycles) are inherently unable to scale down as well as technologies whose different principles avoid these issues.
• By the time the new reactors could be proven, accepted by regulators and the public, financed, built, and convincingly tested, they couldn’t undercut the then prices of negawatts and micropower that are beating them by 2–20× today—and would have gained decades of further head start on their own economies of mass production.

In short, the notion that different or smaller reactors plus wholly new fuel cycles (and, usually, new competitive conditions and political systems) could overcome nuclear energy's inherent problems is not just decades too late, but fundamentally a fantasy.

Fantasies are all right, but people should pay for their own. Investors in and advocates of small-reactor innovations will be disappointed. But in due course, the aging advocates of the half-century-old reactor concepts that never made it to market will retire and die, their credulous young devotees will relearn painful lessons lately forgotten, and the whole nuclear business will complete its slow death of an incurable attack of market forces. Meanwhile, the rest of us shouldn't be distracted from getting on with the winning investments that make sense, make money, and really do solve the energy, climate, and proliferation problems, led by business for profit.

Amory Lovins, a student of nuclear issues since the 1960s, is Chairman and Chief Scientist of RMI. He is grateful to Drs. Tom Cochran (NRDC), Frank von Hippel (Princeton), and Hal Feiveson (Princeton) for generously sharing their insights.

1 A.B. Lovins et al., “Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?,” RMI, 31 Dec. 2008,
www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E09-01_NuclPwrClimFixFolly1i09.pdf.
2 E.g., Tom Blees's Prescription for the Planet, skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm, and three retired Argonne National Laboratory physicists' 2005 Scientific American summary article at www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf.
3 See www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/20081229_Obama_revised.pdf.
4 For a third type often proposed, see J. Harding, “Pebble Bed Modular Reactors—Status and Prospects,” 2005, RMI Publication #E05-10, www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-10_PebbleBedReactors.pdf; S. Thomas, “The Economic Impact of the Proposed Demonstration Plant for the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Design,” Aug 2005, www.psiru.org/reports/2005-09-E-PBMR.pdf; www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2030985, 6 Sep 2005.
5 Such reactors, called “fast reactors” for short, do not slow down their neutrons with a “moderator” like water or graphite. They therefore don't depend on a small fraction of “delayed” neutrons to keep the chain reaction going, so they require different means of control and safety.
6 See www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html.
7 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor.
8 W. Tucker, 13 March 2009, online.wsj.com/article/SB123690627522614525.html.
9 Most proposed thorium cycles need reprocessing to separate U-233 for use in fresh fuel. Some also use 20%-enriched uranium-235, which needs very little further enrichment to become bomb-usable. Diluting U-233 with U-238 also makes more separable plutonium. See A.B. Lovins, “Thorium Cycles and Proliferation,” Bull. atom. Scient. 35(2):16–22 (1979), 35(5):50–54 (1979), 35(9):57–59 (1979), all at books.google.com/books?id=GgsAAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0#all_issues_anchor.
10 See ref. 1.
11 Id.

[Warpy]

10. While I've read all the arguments pro and con

it seems to me to be the difference between being shot in the head (uranium) and choked to death (thorium); you might escape the throttling.

The technology that has to be developed isn't only generating technology, it's point of use technology that turns less energy into less wasted heat.

What kills me is that we're not doing any of it as yet except in the garage tinkering sort of way. We need a heavily funded program the way the space program was funded in the 60s and I simply don't see that happening with the current crop of witless and spineless government people.

[kristopher]

13. We have all the technology we need to proceed full-throttle

Wind, solar PV, solar thermal, wave, current, tidal, geothermal, biomass and a couple of others are all ready to be deployed. All of these are well suited to the distributed generation approach you endorse.

The renewable option: Is it real?
SUNLIGHT: 100,000 TW reaches Earth’s surface (100,000 TWy/year = 3.15 million EJ/yr), 30% on land. Thus 1% of the land area receives 300 TWy/yr, so converting this to usable forms at 10% efficiency would yield 30 TWy/yr, about twice civilization’s rate of energy use in 2004.

WIND: Solar energy flowing into the wind is ~2,000 TW. Wind power estimated to be harvestable from windy sites covering 2% of Earth’s land surface is about twice world electricity generation in 2004.

BIOMASS: Solar energy is stored by photosynthesis on land at a rate of about 60 TW. Energy crops at twice the average terrestrial photosynthetic yield would give 12 TW from 10% of land area (equal to what’s now used for agriculture). Converted to liquid biofuels at 50% efficiency, this would be 6 TWy/yr, more than world oil use in 2004.

Renewable energy potential is immense. Questions are what it will cost & how much society wants to pay for environmental & security advantages.



The nuclear option: size of the challenges
• If world electricity demand grows 2%/year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...

–nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;

– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000 MWe each.

• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
---–enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
---–diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.

• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
---–the associated flow of separated, directly weapon - usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
---–diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.

• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
---–34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.

Conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, but doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.

Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

[TheWraith]

23. And to top it off, you're still posting wildly ridiculous, debunked numbers.

The same rationale presented in that text for why the author thinks nuclear power can't work would apply ten times over to solar, biomass, and wind. If you allow rationalization instead of science to drive your math, then you can bullshit your way through anything.

[kristopher]

25. *You* have debunked those numbers from Holdren?

ROFLMAO

I don't think so.

:silly:

[madokie]

19. No wonder someone here hates this man with a passion

Lovins puts it in plain english why more nuclear energy, irregardless of the fuel type is not a solution to our global warming problem.

After reading this I now understand why 'nads' hates this man so much. He lays to rest the bullshit that is the nuclear power industry in a clean, concise and direct fashion.

Thank you for this reply Kris
Thank you Bananas for this very enlightening thread
My hat is off to both of you

[kristopher]

20. De nada...

The amount of disinformation on this forum is simply staggering, isn't it?

[madokie]

21. I'm not even sure staggering covers it

All I know for sure is the nuclear energy genie should never have been let out of the bottle. The claim that no deaths is caused by nuclear energy is a baldfaced lie but then again the whole of the nuclear energy consortium is a lie. Too cheap to meter my ass

[TheWraith]

22. Nice to know you're still citing British Petroleum employee Lovins as an "environmentalist." nt

[bananas]

27. Countering the Republican War on Science

Lovins is an environemtalist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins

Amory Lovins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amory Lovins
Born November 13, 1947 (1947-11-13)
Washington, DC
Occupation environmentalist, consultant physicist<1><2>

Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947 in Washington, DC)<3> is Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. For four decades he has worked in energy policy and related areas.

Lovins worked professionally as an environmentalist in the 1970s and since then as an analyst of a "soft energy path" for the United States and other nations. He has promoted energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, and the generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. Lovins has also advocated a "negawatt revolution" arguing that utility customers don’t want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services. In the 1990s, his work with Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar.

Lovins has received ten honorary doctorates and won many awards. He has provided expert testimony in eight countries, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books. These books include Winning the Oil Endgame, Small is Profitable, Factor Four, and Natural Capitalism. In 2009, Time magazine named Lovins as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

Contents

* 1 Early history
* 2 Work
o 2.1 Friends of the Earth
o 2.2 Rocky Mountain Institute
* 3 Ideas
o 3.1 Soft energy paths
o 3.2 Negawatt revolution
o 3.3 Hypercar
* 4 Awards
* 5 Books
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links

Early history

Lovins spent much of his youth in Silver Spring, Maryland and in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1964, Lovins entered Harvard College. After two years there, he transferred in 1967 to Magdalen College, Oxford, England, where he studied physics and other topics. In 1969 he became a Junior Research Fellow in Oxford’s Merton College, where he received an Oxford master of arts (M.A.) as a result of becoming a university don. However, the University would not allow him to pursue a doctorate in energy, as it was two years before the 1973 oil embargo, and energy was not yet considered an academic subject. Lovins resigned his Fellowship and moved to London to pursue his energy work. He moved back to the U.S. in 1981 and settled in Western Colorado in 1982.<4>

In 1979 he married L. Hunter Sheldon, a lawyer, forester, and social scientist. Hunter received her undergraduate degree in sociology and political studies from Pitzer College, and her J.D. from Loyola University's School of Law. They separated in 1989 and divorced in 1999.<5> In 2007, he married Judy Hill Lovins, a fine-art landscape photographer.

Work

Friends of the Earth

Each summer from about 1965 to 1981, Lovins guided mountaineering trips and photographed the White Mountains of New Hampshire, contributing photographs to At Home in the Wild: New England's White Mountains. In 1971 he wrote about the endangered Snowdonia National Park in the book, Eryri, the Mountains of Longing, commissioned by David Brower, president of Friends of the Earth.<6> Lovins spent about a decade as British Representative for Friends of the Earth.

During the early seventies, Lovins became interested in the area of resource policy, especially energy policy. The 1973 energy crisis helped create an audience for his writing and an essay originally penned as a U.N. paper grew into his first book concerned with energy, World Energy Strategies (1973). His next book was Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy (1975), co-authored with John H. Price. Lovins published a 10,000-word essay "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" in Foreign Affairs, in October 1976. Its contents were the subject of many seminars at government departments, universities, energy agencies, and nuclear energy research centers, during 1975-1977.<7> The article was expanded and published as Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace in 1977.

Rocky Mountain Institute

By 1978 Lovins had published six books, consulted widely, and was active in energy affairs in some 15 countries. In 1982, he and Hunter Lovins founded Rocky Mountain Institute, based in Snowmass, Colorado. Together with a group of colleagues, the Lovinses fostered efficient resource use and sustainable development.<6>

Lovins has briefed 19 heads of state, provided expert testimony in eight countries, and published 29 books and several hundred papers.<4> His clients have included many Fortune 500 companies, major real-estate developers, and utilities.<4> Public-sector clients have included the OECD, UN, Resources for the Future, many national governments, and 13 US states.<4> Lovins served in 1980-81 on the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Research Advisory Board, and in 1999-2001 and 2006-08 on Defense Science Board task forces on military energy efficiency and strategy. His visiting academic chairs most recently included a visiting professorship in Stanford University's School of Engineering.<8>

Since 1982, RMI has grown into a broad-based "think-and-do tank" with more than 85 staff and an annual budget of some $13 million.<4> RMI has spun off five for-profit companies.<9>

Ideas

Soft energy paths

Solar energy technologies, such as solar water heaters, located on or near the buildings which they supply with energy, are a prime example of a soft energy technology.

Amory Lovins advocates "soft energy paths" involving efficient energy use, diverse and renewable energy sources, and special reliance on "soft energy technologies". Soft energy technologies are those based on solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, etc. which are matched in scale and quality to their task. Residential solar energy technologies are prime examples of soft energy technologies and rapid deployment of simple, energy conserving, residential solar energy technologies is fundamental to a soft energy strategy.<10>

Lovins has described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient energy use and centralized, non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels. One of Lovins' main concerns was the danger of committing to nuclear energy to meet a society's energy needs, due chiefly to what he considered its poor economics and high risk of fostering nuclear weapons proliferation.<6><11><12>

Lovins argued that besides environmental benefits, global political stresses might be reduced by Western nations committing to the soft energy path. He believes soft path impacts are more "gentle, pleasant and manageable" than hard path impacts. These impacts range from the individual and household level to those affecting the very fabric of society at the national and international level.<10>

Negawatt revolution

A "negawatt revolution" would involve the rapid deployment of electricity-saving technologies, such as compact fluorescent lamps.

A negawatt is a unit in watts of energy saved. It is basically the opposite of a watt. Amory Lovins has advocated a "negawatt revolution", arguing that utility customers don’t want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services such as hot showers, cold beer, lit rooms, and spinning shafts, which can come more cheaply if electricity is used more efficiently.<13>

According to Lovins, energy efficiency represents a profitable global market and American companies have at their disposal the technical innovations to lead the way. Not only should they "upgrade their plants and office buildings, but they should encourage the formation of negawatt markets".<14> Lovins sees negawatt markets as a win-win solution to many environmental problems. Because it is "now generally cheaper to save fuel than to burn it, global warming, acid rain, and urban smog can be reduced not at a cost but at a profit".<14>

Lovins explains that many companies are already enjoying the financial and other rewards that come from saving electricity. Yet progress in converting to electricity saving technologies has been slowed by the indifference or outright opposition of some utilities.<13> A second obstacle to efficiency is that many electricity-using devices are purchased by people who won’t be paying their running costs and thus have little incentive to consider efficiency. Lovins also believes that many customers "don't know what the best efficiency buys are, where to get them, or how to shop for them".<13>

Hypercar

Amory Lovins has developed the design concept of the Hypercar. This vehicle would have ultra-light construction with an aerodynamic body using advanced composite materials, low-drag design, and hybrid drive.<15> Designers of the Hypercar claim that it would achieve a three- to fivefold improvement in fuel economy, equal or better performance, safety, amenity, and affordability, compared with today's cars.<16>

Awards

Amory Lovins has received ten honorary doctorates and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1984, of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988, and of the World Business Academy in 2001. He has received the World Technology Award, the Right Livelihood Award, the Blue Planet Prize, Volvo Environment Prize, the 4th Annual Heinz Award in the Environment in 1998,<17> and the National Design (Design Mind), Jean Meyer, and Lindbergh Awards.<3><4>

Lovins is also the recipient of the Time Hero for the Planet awards, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, and the Shingo, Nissan, Mitchell, and Onassis Prizes. He has also received a MacArthur Fellowship and is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an Honorary Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.<3><4>

In 2009, Time magazine named Lovins as one of the world's 100 most influential people.<4><18>

Books

This is a list of books which are authored or co-authored by Amory B. Lovins, or which include a foreword by him:<3>

* Eryri, the Mountains of Longing San Francisco, Friends of the Earth, 1972. (with Philip Evans) ISBN 978-0841501294. 181 p.
* Openpit Mining London : Earth Island, 1973. ISBN 978-0856440205. 118 p.
* World Energy Strategies: Facts, Issues, and Options London : Friends of the Earth Ltd for Earth Resources Research Ltd, 1975. 131 p. ISBN 978-0884106012.
* Nuclear power: Technical Bases for Ethical Concern (1975, 2nd edition). 39 p. ISBN 978-0950327365
* Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace San Francisco : Friends of the Earth International, 1977 231p. ISBN 0-06-090653-7
* The Energy Controversy: Soft Path Questions and Answers (1979) ISBN 978-0913890226
* Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy (with John H. Price) San Francisco, 1980. 223p. ISBN 978-0060907778
* A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture & Technology (1980) ASIN: B000MWEXMC
* Energy/War, Breaking the Nuclear Link San Francisco : Friends of the Earth, 1981 161p. ISBN 978-0913890448
* Least-Cost Energy: Solving the C02 Problem Andover, Mass. : Brick House Pub. Co., 1982 184p. ISBN 978-0931790362
* Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (with L Hunter Lovins) Andover, Mass. : Brick House, 1982 re-released in 2001. 486p. ISBN 0-931790-28-X
* The First Nuclear World War (with Patrick O'Heffernan; L Hunter Lovins) New York : Morrow, 1983. 444 p ISBN 978-0091558307
* Energy Unbound: A Fable for America's Future (with L Hunter Lovins; Seth Zuckerman) San Francisco : Sierra Club Books, 1986. 390 p ISBN 0-87156-820-9
* Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings (1991) ISBN 978-0918249098
* Reinventing Electric Utilities: Competition, Citizen Action, and Clean Power (1996) ISBN 978-1559634557
* Factor Four: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use: A Report to the Club of Rome (1997) ISBN 978-1853834073
* Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (2000) ISBN 1-85383-763-6
* Small is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2003) ISBN 1-881071-07-3
* The Natural Advantage Of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation And Governance in the 21st Century (2004) ISBN 1-84407-121-9
* Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs and Security (2005) ISBN 1-84407-194-4 (Available Online in PDF)
* Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Save the Earth (2007) ISBN 978-1578051380

Non-English

* Faktor vier. Doppelter Wohlstand - halbierter Verbrauch (1997) ISBN 978-3426772867
* Facteur 4 : deux fois plus de bien-être en consommant deux fois moins de ressources: Rapport au Club de Rome (1997) ISBN 978-2904082672
* Öko-Kapitalismus: Die industrielle Revolution des 21. Jahrhunderts (2002) ISBN 978-1400039418

See also
Energy portal

* Renewable energy commercialization
* Renewable energy policy
* Renewable energy industry
* Energy security and renewable technology
* Anti-nuclear movement in the United States
* Al Gore
* Hermann Scheer
* Benjamin K. Sovacool
* Eric Martinot
* Mark Diesendorf

References

1. ^ Right Livelihood Award. Amory and Hunter Lovins (USA) (1983)
2. ^ Amory B. Lovins. Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken? Foreign Affairs, October 1976.
3. ^ a b c d The International Who's Who 2010, 73rd edition, Routledge, 2009, p. 1338.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Lovins Bio
5. ^ Iconoclast Gets Consultant Fees To Tell Big Oil It's Fading Fast
6. ^ a b c Profile of the 2007 Blue Planet Prize Recipient
7. ^ Amory Lovins (1977). Soft Energy Paths, p. 220.
8. ^ Stanford Energy Lectures
9. ^ Most recently www.esource.com, www.fiberforge.com, and www.brightautomotive.com
10. ^ a b Amory Lovins (1977). Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace ISBN 0-06-090653-7
11. ^ Amory Lovins. Nuclear Power and Nuclear Bombs, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980.
12. ^ Nuclear Energy Publications
13. ^ a b c Amory B. Lovins. The Negawatt Revolution Across the Board, Vol. XXVII No. 9, September 1990, pp. 21-22.
14. ^ a b Amory B. Lovins. The Negawatt Revolution Across the Board, Vol. XXVII No. 9, September 1990, p. 23.
15. ^ Hypercars, hydrogen, and the automotive transition International Journal of Vehicle Design, Vol. 35, Nos. 1/2, 2004.
16. ^ Diesendorf, Mark (2007). Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy, UNSW Press, pp. 191–192.
17. ^ The Heinz Awards, Amory Lovins profile
18. ^ Carl Pope. The 2009 TIME 100: Amory Lovins TIME magazine, April 30, 2009.

External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Amory Lovins

* The Rocky Mountain Institute's home page
* Lectures series on energy efficiency, March 2007
* Amory Lovins' biography at Right Livelihood Award
* The Volvo Environment Prize is awarded to Amory B. Lovins
* The frugal cornucopian
* Congressional testimony on nuclear power
* America's Best Leaders: Amory Lovins, Energy Scientist
* TED Talks: Amory Lovins on winning the oil endgame at TED in 2005
* Amory Lovins on Energy Efficiency at IIEA, 8 May 2009
* Internet Archive (archive.org) video and audio


Amory Lovins
Hunter Lovins · List of books · Rocky Mountain Institute · Soft energy path · Soft energy technology

Select bibliography

Energy policy

Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs and Security (2005) · Small is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2003) · Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (1982 re-released in 2001) · Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy (1980) · Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace (1977)

Environment

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (2000)

Filmography

Lovins on the Soft Path: An Energy Future with a Future (1982)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins"

Categories: 1947 births | Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford | American business writers | American environmentalists | American non-fiction environmental writers | American physicists | Appropriate technology advocates | Bates College alumni | Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford | Harvard University alumni | Living people | MacArthur Fellows | People associated with energy | People from Amherst, Massachusetts | Renewable energy commercialization | Sustainability advocates

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[diane in sf]

3. I see the nnuke nnuts have been busy unrecommending...

[Systematic Chaos]

4. But you're used to that by now, aren't you?

:D

[Kolesar]

11. EEforum TToadies...eom

[NNadir]

6. Meanwhile on planet earth, the Chinese have operated an HTGR for a decade.

You'd have to be an airhead to not understand that Chinese chemists are adapting this type of reactor to make SI based fuels.

China will build a few of these reactors on scale in the period after 2020, as will the Koreans.

Germany operated one a while ago, but ignorant anti-nukes with poor educations agitated to shut it down.

Have a nice flying metal kind of day.

[NickB79]

14. And in the meantime

South Africa is going forward on a plan to build a 4800 MW coal-fired plant: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/04/world-bank-fund-giant-new-coal-plant

Oops.

[kristopher]

15. Brought to you by the same interest groups that wasted the money on the reactor

Nuclear and coal are the SAME entrenched interest groups; they know coal is going to be phased out and they are desperate to find a way to hold onto their position as a bottleneck in the world's energy supply.

What part of that don't you get?

[NickB79]

16. What I don't get are conspiracy theories like yours

That imply there is a veiled yet concerted, global effort by companies that profit from fossil fuels to place a chokehold on world energy markets despite knowing they are working with finite, rapidly depleting resources and increasing political and public backlash that will soon put them out of business.

It sounds too smoky-back-room/Illuminati for my tastes.

[kristopher]

17. It isn't a conspiracy, it is perfectly normal, profit seeking corporate behavior.

It is also completely consistent with what has been documented in political studies, sociology, linguistics and cultural anthropology to name only the fields I've personally studied. I'm frankly shocked you would think that the "power elites" of all cultures *do not* actively seek to maintain their hold on resources and influence via such manipulation. It isn't exactly a novel concept.

Next you'll be saying they haven't been spreading misinformation on AGW for 20 years; that such a view is "too smoky-back-room/Illuminati" for your tastes.

[kristopher]

18. More from the "smoky-back-room/Illuminati"

The Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism

Co-authored with Riley E. Dunlap and Mark Freeman published in the journal Environmental Politics, June 2008

Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed 'sceptics' claim to be unbiased analysts combating 'junk science'. This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks (CTTs). Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We conclude that scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection.

download here: http://ucf.academia.edu/PeterJacques/Papers


Sample of the output of the same CTTs on topic of nuclear:

Heritage Foundation
Where Is Nuclear Energy in the Markey-Waxman Energy Bill
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/04/Where-Is-Nuclear-Energy-in-the-Markey-Waxman-Energy-Bill

Union of Concerned Scientists
January 2007

Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air
How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science


Executive Summary

In an effort to deceive the public about the reality of global warming, ExxonMobil has underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry misled the public about the scientific evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease.

As this report documents, the two disinformation campaigns are strikingly similar. ExxonMobil has drawn upon the tactics and even some of the organizations and actors involved in the callous disinformation campaign the tobacco industry waged for 40 years. Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil has:

- Manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts
about even the most indisputable scientific
evidence.
- Adopted a strategy of information laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message and thereby confuse the public.

- Promoted scientific spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in their attempts to persuade the media and the public that there is still serious debate among scientists that burning fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and that human-caused warming will have serious consequences.

- Attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on global warming with misleading charges about the need for “sound science.”

- Used its extraordinary access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.

The report documents that, despite the scientific consensus about the fundamental understanding that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions, Exxon-Mobil has funneled about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue. Many of these organizations have an overlapping — sometimes identical - collection of spokespeople serving as staff, board members, and scientific advisors. By publishing and republishing the non-peer-reviewed works of a small group of scientific spokespeople, Exxon-Mobil-funded organizations have propped up and amplified work that has been discredited by reputable climate scientists.

ExxonMobil’s funding of established research institutions that seek to better understand science, policies, and technologies to address global warming has given the corporation “cover,” while its funding of ideological and advocacy organizations to conduct a disinformation campaign works to confuse that understanding. This seemingly inconsistent activity makes sense when looked at through a broader lens. Like the tobacco companies in previous decades, this strategy provides a positive “pro-science” public stance for ExxonMobil that masks their activity to delay meaningful action on global warming and helps keep the public debate stalled on the science rather than focused on policy options to address the problem.

In addition, like Big Tobacco before it, ExxonMobil has been enormously successful at influencing the current administration and key members of Congress. Documents highlighted in this report, coupled with subsequent events, provide evidence of ExxonMobil’s cozy relationship with government officials, which enables the corporation to work behind the scenes to gain access to key decision makers. In some cases, the company’s proxies have directly shaped the global warming message put forth by federal agencies.

Finally, this report provides a set of steps elected officials, investors, and citizens can take to neutralize ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign and remove this roadblock to sensible action for reducing global warming emissions.

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

[TheWraith]

24. Right, that's why BP and the big coal companies hire Amory Lovins to attack nuclear power.

Wait, what?

[kristopher]

26. Lovins made his mark on the world by correctly describing the role of centralized power...

...generation in modern society and laying out a viable alternative. His criticisms of nuclear as a negative social force applies equally to coal and petroleum. Only an imbecile would be able to look at his body of work and think he is anything but what he is recognized as - a leader in the effort to bring sanity to our energy system in order to clean up the planet and help the common people over the entrenched power elites.


He is one of, if not THE world's leading authority on energy efficiency and conservation and he works with a very large list of clients to identify effective strategies for energy efficiency in their operations.

Here is what he has ACTUALLY done:

Amory B. Lovins
Cofounder and CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute

Lovins Amory Lovins, a MacArthur and Ashoka Fellow and consultant physicist, is among the world's leading innovators in energy and its links with resources, security, development, and environment. He has advised the energy and other industries for more than three decades as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. His work in 50+ countries has been recognized by the "Alternative Nobel," Blue Planet, Volvo, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, Goff Smith, and Mitchell Prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, 11 honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, honorary Senior Fellowship of the Design Futures Council, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet, Time International Hero of the Environment, Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership, National Design (Design Mind), and World Technology Awards. A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he has briefed 20 heads of state and advises major firms and governments worldwide, recently including the leadership of Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Holcim, Interface, and Wal-Mart. In 2009, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers.

Mr. Lovins cofounded and is Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org), an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank that creates abundance by design. Much of its pathfinding work on advanced resource productivity (typically with expanding returns to investment) and innovative business strategies is synthesized in Natural Capitalism (1999, with Paul Hawken and L.H. Lovins, www.natcap.org). This intellectual capital provides most of RMI's revenue through private-sector consultancy that has served or been invited by more than 80 Fortune 500 firms, lately redesigning more than $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors. In 1992, RMI spun off E SOURCE (www.esource.com), and in 1999, Fiberforge Corporation (www.fiberforge.com), a composites technology firm that Mr. Lovins chaired until 2007; its technology, when matured and scaled, will permit cost- effective manufacturing of the ultralight-hybrid Hypercar® vehicles he invented in 1991.

The latest of his 29 books are Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2002, www.smallisprofitable.org), an Economist book of the year blending financial economics with electrical engineering, and the Pentagon-cosponsored Winning the Oil Endgame (2004, www.oilendgame.com), a roadmap for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit. His most recent visiting academic chair was in spring 2007 as MAP/Ming Professor in Stanford's School of Engineering, offering the University's first course on advanced energy efficiency (www.rmi.org/stanford).

From his bio for the 2004 book "Winning the Oil Endgame" a plan for ending US oil use written for the Pentagon.
http://www.oilendgame.com/TheAuthors.html