There is nothing I find more annoying than bad reasoning by self-appointed “heretics.”

Unfortunately this tactic often gets a lot of attention. Witness Jesse Ausubel’s “Renewable and nuclear heresies,” which claims that renewable energy sources are not green, while nuclear power is.

Ausubel reaches this conclusion by elevating energy density (watts per square meter) to the only figure of merit for energy technologies. In doing so, he –

• ignores economies of mass production in favor of economies of scale.
• ignores opportunities to use land for multiple purposes (e.g. roof-top solar and wind farming on farmed land).
• treats all land use as equivalent (e.g. an acre used for a nuclear power plant is equated to an acre of switchgrass used for bioenergy).

Finally, in assessing the land use impacts of nuclear power he only counts the power plant itself, not uranium mining or waste disposal.

The notion that supporting nuclear power is heretical is bizarre to begin with given the $85 billion in subsidies the industry has received over the last 50 years and the fact that it supplies 20% of U.S. electricity today, all without a single plant having been built in a truly competitive market.

Heretic or not, Ausubel simply gets it wrong. Less flamboyant, but better reasoned analysis of the potential for renewables can be found here and the liabilities of nuclear power here.