Small-Scale Competitors Beat Nuclear Power Rocky Mountain Institute Environmental Media Services

Snowmass, CO - Rocky Mountain Institute researchers today doused the hype about "nuclear revival" in an icy bath of real-world data. They documented that worldwide, the decentralized, low- or no-carbon sources of electricity-cogeneration and renewables, all claimed by nuclear advocates to be too small and too slow to help much with climate change-are already bigger than nuclear power and are quickly leaving it in the dust.

"Nuclear advocates are desperately trying to create an illusion that their failed option is being revived," said RMI CEO and cofounder Amory Lovins, the lead author of the analysis, "so all its remaining costs and risks, which private investors have rejected, can be loaded onto taxpayers. This bailout, now being debated in Washington, is claimed to be vital because nuclear power is the only power source big and fast enough to combat climate change. But industry and official data reveal that claim to be false. While nuclear power dies of an incurable attack of market forces, its derided smaller-scale competitors are already a bigger global power source and are growing very rapidly, while nuclear power continues to fade away."

The analysis appears as the cover story in RMI's summer 2005 newsletter, published today (available online at www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1154.php Wednesday 22 June 2005