Publication Laka-library:
Non-nuclear Futures. The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy (1975)
| Author | Amory Lovins, John H.Price |
| Date | 1975 |
| Classification | 6.01.0.00/268 (GENERAL) |
| Front | 
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From the publication:
Whether rapid expansion of nuclear power is wise, practicable, economic, or necessary is now vigorously debated around the world. For people-whether lay or expert-who seek to understand the issues underlying the debate, this orderly and closely focused survey is invaluable. It not only outlines concisely the main technical grounds for ethical, social, and economic concern in a way intelligible to those without technical training, but also supports its general arguments with amply documented technical discussion that serves for the first time to introduce expert advocates of nuclear power, in their own idiom, to other views. Also presented here for the first time is some pioneering work in the new science of energy analysis, showing why crash programs to increase energy supply (particularly through nuclear power) can yield little net energy, or can even be net energy consumers, over the next few decades when they are supposed to be supplementing already-scarce supplies. Though the analysis is first done in general terms, its application to present national nuclear plans suggests that proponents of nuclear power as a prompt and independent source of abundant energy have overlooked some basic facts. Yet the greatest utility of this book-the work of an American and an Australian physicist both working in London-arises not from its broad scope, its readability, or its international perspective, but from its sophisticated policy context. Nuclear power is considered not as one of a few options for incremental short-term decisions on electricity supply, but as one of many elements in a broad strategic picture stretching far into the next century. On this time-scale, large policy issues that were previously hazy or invisible begin to assume their real importance. Avoiding repressive or anarchic social traps, climatic constraints, capital collapses, and deepening world inequities requires us to think backwards from desired long- term end states to find out what must be done (or omitted) now in order to retain options needed later. We must also relate the scale, degree of centralization, and degree of electrification of energy systems to the types and patterns of energy that people need. Such insights suggest strategies that rely on wide-ranging energy conservation and (as briefly and sparingly as possible) on the more intelligent use of fossil fuels to buy the few decades needed to deploy a diverse range of decentralized technologies for using natural energy flows, thus entirely bypassing the nuclear economy. The perspectives that underlie this approach to our interrelated problems of energy and of social purpose are urgently needed today, both because only long-range thinking can break an ever-worsening cycle of ad-hocracy, and because misguided decisions being taken now are rapidly foreclosing desirable options and locking us into unsustainable ones. The hard task of making alternative national models explicit, with detailed numbers, dates, and policies, has barely begun; but this provocative and stimulating exploration of the frontiers of energy strategy offers us both new ways and cogent reasons to think differently about our energy future.
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