Nuclear Fantasies

ERoEI, or rather lack of it, is what will determine our future. So when a video explaining it really well comes along I like to watch. I’d never heard of Leigh Goering before. Initially he certainly sounds like an intelligent person with a great grasp of the subject of ERoEI and its history and the history of the deployment of modern energy systems like fossil fuels and renewables. I even learned quite a lot from this video. But then, he inexplicably starts waxing lyrical about nuclear power as if it wasn’t subject to all the limits of the other energy sources he obviously thinks have no future…

Over the past few years I have come across a lot of this nuclear fantasy. It’s where Simon Michaux shines methinks, no vested interest in any BS!

Leigh Goehring believes nuclear power has astonishingly high ERoEI while he correctly pulls non renewable renewable energy harvesting technologies down to realistic levels. A quick search on work by Charlie Hall who invented the idea of ERoEI reveals nuclear power has an actual ERoEI of 5~15…. This is what always happens when you include everything and don’t cherry pick stuff to make your favourite saviour look good.

Digging a bit further, I found that the literature is very divided on the EROI of nuclear, listing it at anywhere from 1:1 (i.e., uneconomical at any price) to 90:1 (i.e., the most bountiful energy source in history). Limits to growth will be nuclear’s last nail in the coffin. We’re already in a surplus energy crisis and there’s nowhere near enough left to save complex civilisation…. I think it’s ironic this video is titled “shortage of everything”, except, obviously, nuclear power…