Amory Lovins's The Nuclear Illusion is a white paper, published in 2008 by the Rocky Mountain Institute (an organization founded by Amory Lovins himself), that explores in detail the feasibility of nuclear fission as an energy source. Lovins coauthored the paper with Imran Sheikh. The thesis of the work is that, despite a recent revival of interest in nuclear power, fission plants are quite far from being economically competitive with other energy sources. The paper suggests that elevated, and climbing, costs are primarily due to "severe manufacturing bottlenecks and scarcities of critical engineering, construction, and management skills that have decayed during the industry's long order lull" although these factors would disappear once orders are placed, new plants built and the industry revives.
The authors advocate what they call "micropower", which includes onsite cogeneration and distributed renewable energy, and "negawatts", or investment in end-use energy efficiency, as the most economic ways to address global energy demand. Furthermore, the authors propose that, even though onsite cogeneration emits more carbon dioxide per kWh than nuclear power, micropower will ultimately displace more carbon dioxide per dollar spent than nuclear power because fewer coal plants will need to be constructed. A peculiar argument since it is akin to saying that more apples are eaten than bananas since oranges taste better than apples.
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