Is nuclear the new green?
Posted on July 14, 2006 by Richard Beddard
Filed Under Investing |
How many people died as a direct result of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster, twenty years ago? If you watched Horizon last night you’ll know the answer. According to the Chernobyl Forum, an international coalition of scientific bodies, 56 people have died so far, most of them heroes sent in to clean the power station up.
The programme set out to establish why predictions, in Chernobyl’s aftermath, of hundreds of thousands of deaths were so exaggerated. It concluded that assumptions behind the conventional model weighing the risk of cancer against the level of radiation are flawed. The relationship is not linear, as scientists supposed, but a curve. At low levels radiation has no effect. It might even be beneficial. Atom bombs release lethal doses of radiation with widespread long-term consequences. Nuclear power stations don’t, even when badly designed ones explode - apparently.
There will be many sceptics, but value investors are looking at nuclear energy through the prism of opportunity. There’s nothing like a dirty industry to drive investors away, and prices down. Although the world’s first nuclear power station was British, opened at Calder Hall in 1956, fear of radiation buried the industry in the eighties and nineties.
Now it appears it may not be as dirty as we thought, and the Government is pushing nuclear energy, as well as renewables, in its energy review. If the industry’s reputation is recovering, it’s no wonder investors are interested.
I’m not going all gung-ho on nuclear having watched one documentary. There are still big questions unanswered; like paying for the plants, and what to do with the waste. When Peter Temple added British Energy to his model Income Portfolio it was the fat dividend expected next year that attracted him, not it’s clean credentials.
But could it be that one-day companies servicing the nuclear industry are stalwarts of ethical portfolios and funds? In an interview in the Independent earlier in the year scientist James Lovelock, inventor of the GAIA hypothesis (that the earth is a self-regulating system) said,
“We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen… I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.”
According to Professor Lovelock, the climate of the beautifully balanced earth of his hypothesis is spiralling out of control because of our reliance on coal, oil and gas for energy. Nuclear energy may save us, or some of us.
Life, he says thrives around nuclear power stations. It seems a preposterous notion, but it’s eerily reminiscent of the wildlife around Chernobyl, as depicted in last night’s documentary.
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A new fund was launched on Monday describing itself as the “only fund dedicated to investing in companies involved in the uranium and nuclear power markets.” It’s called Geiger Counter.
Geiger Counter discussion
British Energy discussion
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7 Responses to “Is nuclear the new green?”
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Nuclear is the only non co2 emitting electricity generation technology that can produce the large quantities of power that our country needs. It has the great advantage of being highly developed with years of experience. Windpower stops when the wind doesn’t blow so requires backup from conventional power stations. Indeed it undermines the economics of these conventional power stations because they have to be shut down when the wind does blow. Wind turbines also take vast amounts of our countryside turning it into an industrial landscape. Carbon capture from conventional power stations will be immensely expensive and is unproven technology. Tidal power is available at few sites and again will be extraordinarily expensive and will take many years to develop and build. What else is there? Calls for mini power generation is simply not practical for most people. The idea that individual efforts to save electricity will do the job is ludicrous. The only way to significantly reduce co2 from electricity generation is to build lots of nuclear power stations as quickly as possible. All the other ideas are simply dreaming.
Great and timely article of common sense. Isn’t it sad that the nuclear debate tends to be based on a “you’re either with us or agin us” stance? Bit like catastropism v unitarianism in the Evolution community. I believe that all current sources of power have a role to play, one that, for each, will see declines and advances until an affordable balance is reached. Just as we stopped burning coal in our grates so we will stop wasting fossil fuels as cheap energy sources and use safer alternatives - but only if we squash the present partisan approach that is all prevalent today, whereby proponents of one power source spend more time trying to rubbish alternatives they see as threats instead of seeing if they can accommodate them in their own scheme of things.
By the way, whatever happened to Fusion power?
I strongly suggest you read my book. It is available now on Amazon.com and Borders.com.
Read why nuclear power is absolutely essential if civilization is to survive.
The book is entitled NUCLEAR GREEN, and it is must reading for anyone interested in the future of this planet.
The book is available at Amazon.com and Borders.com
Nuclear power is not only the best way to stop and reverse global warming, it is the ONLY way!
We would have weaned ourselves off of oil and we wouldn’t be in a war in Iraq if it wasn’t for the Greens (mainly Sierra Club and GreenPeace) and for every man and woman we’ve lost in Iraq their blood is on their hands !
Every country has the right…..in fact, the obligation….to build nuclear power plants. As I’ve said many times, nuclear energy is the only effective way to end pollution, and, indeed, global warming. There is no other solution.
And on the subject of Iran, we should be helping them build their nuclear power plants….not standing in their way. The world must be assured, however, that they will not use those plants to enrich uranium for the purpose of making nuclear weapons. And on that note, I’d like to give our President some unsolicited advice.
Remember in 1972 when our greatest potential enemy was China? President Nixon
shocked the world and changed it forever when he became the first president ever to visit China. At that time, China was considered a much greater threat to the United States than Iran is now. You know, There’s an old saying, “If the mountain won’t go to Mohammed then Mohammed should go the mountain.” Mr. President, you should do what Nixon would have done. You should go to Iran, and you should go there NOW!
Such a visit could end the war in Iraq. And it would not only salvage your presidency, it would certainly restore to us the world-wide respect we once enjoyed.
agreed but parralel development of biofuels is required