This Post Has 8 Comments

1. 

   Purewater March 28, 2011 Reply

   Geothermal is missing…I wonder if it’s excluded because it’s such a small energy source or because it’s caused zero deaths.

2. 

   Chris MacIntosh March 28, 2011 Reply

   It’s clean, renewable and instant. Unlike solar and wind it provides base load power. It also requires very little land and generates close to zero carbon emissions. Can you tell we like it?

   One of the problems with Geothermal energy is that of transportation of energy but these problems left to unfettered capitalists will likely be resolved. That said Geothermal supplies more than 10,000 MW to 24 countries worldwide and actually produces enough electricity to meet the needs of over 60 million people. Over this side of the world where I’m based at present for example we have The Philippines, generating 23% of its electricity from geothermal energy. That’s not insignificant. Of course there are countries which don’t use it at all so worldwide Geothermal is a mere blip on the energy complex radar at present.
   Iceland is of course touted as the success story of the geothermal community. The country is overrun with 300,000 people (crowding must be a real issue) and is now fully powered by renewable forms of energy, with 17% of electricity and 87% of heating needs provided by geothermal energy. They’ve been expanding geothermal power production recently to meet growing industrial and commercial energy demand. Politics there is problematic though.

   In our humble opinions this sector is a forgotten unloved sector with enormous potential. You might want to take a look at Rampower, Magma energy and Nevada Geothermal. If you were to buy all three you would own most of the US geothermal sector in these stocks. The sector is tiny, growing and unloved. More importantly it actually makes sense.

3. 

   Purewater March 29, 2011 Reply

   We’re on the same page, I own 2 of the 3. Thanks for the digging up this death/twh data, I used it in a blog post and linked your article. Fascinating stuff.

   http://www.solitudecanyon.com/thoughts-from-the-canyon/which-energy-source-causes-the-most-deaths-hint-it-ain-t-nuclear-

4. 

   Djamel Hassaine March 29, 2011 Reply

   I’m not surprised, no one was interested in finding out what the facts were regarding natural disaster activity. How else can you explain how so many people believe fervently in specific religions which are mostly based on their geographical origin: Middle-east probably Muslim, Europe – Christian, etc (I’m grossly stereotyping here, but I hope you get the idea). The spoon-feeding of facts and ‘accepted wisdom’ starts at a young age.

   Learning in this way is mostly beneficial; to quote Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants”. Building upon previous knowledge is part of the scientific model, which may be the biggest contributing factor to the unprecedented social advancement we’ve experienced in the last two centuries. The biggest flaw with this approach though is assuming what you know is correct when it isn’t.

   You really can’t beat verifying the facts for yourself and apply your own critical thinking. Obviously its not possible to question everything you’ve learnt from other sources (books, news, teachers, etc) as you would probably become incapable of making any decisions. When it comes to investing I think it helps if you identify the most crucial facts influencing your investment thesis and concentrate on verifying those only (I realise this is much harder than it sounds).

   For example: is uranium a good investment right now? The price has been knocked down, presumably because a lot of people have concluded nuclear is dangerous and governments will post-pone or shelve plans for new nuclear stations. Based on the figure Chris has presented, it looks like nuclear is actually one of the safer fuels, so uranium must be a good investment right? This investment thesis would also rely on governments acting for the benefit of society rather than pandering to populist votes and seeking re-election; I don’t really need to waste time checking my knowledge that governments tend to focus more on re-election than anything else, so in this case I think the market has got it right, and I personally won’t be investing in uranium.

   1. 

      Chris MacIntosh March 29, 2011 Reply

      All good points. As mentioned in the Japan post here (http://www.capitalistexploits.com/?p=460) I think its still way to early on the Uranium sector, but drawing up a wishlist and paying careful attention to unloved sectors which actually make economic sense has worked for us in the past.

      1. 

         Djamel Hassaine March 30, 2011 Reply

         Thanks, you make a lot of sense regarding nuclear being a good long term bet, but I’m inclined not to under estimate the irrationality of uniformed people and governments.

         Geothermal could be interesting…

5. 

   Simon April 19, 2011 Reply

   Chris
   What bothers me about your metrics is that you defined “safer” by virtue of short-term or immediate human deaths. That is a valid metric for coal and all the other energy sources except nuclear.

   The problem with nuclear is that an incident like Chernobyl may cause very few immediate deaths but may cause billions of dollars in long-term damage. I was reading about this recently (sorry I haven’t got the links to hand), that vast tracks of land in Europe are still unfit for agriculture or grazing because of radiation damage. Apparently Wales is very badly damaged (you know how they feel about their sheep.)

   How many leaukemia-related deaths in Japan over the next 50 years will be directly caused by the current crisis? Answer: we cannot possibly know, and hence the data will lost and the risk under-valued.

   We are all capitalists, so let me speak in the language of economics: nuclear power creates vastly higher negative externalities than any other form of power. Nuclear power exists for a few reasons – one of which is that it creates cheap power when you ignore the externalities. I think there’s also a strong connection between the nuclear power industry and nuclear weapons industry. I state this because the choice of uranium for nuclear power is only sensible if you are trying to enrich weapons grade uranium as a side product. This was certainly the motivation in the American, British and former Soviet nuclear power industries. Why the f*** Japan would buy into this amazes me as they are supposedly anti nuclear weapons.

   The cracks in the nuclear pie are starting to crumble. For instance a recent article caught my eye about the Chinese using thorium to fuel zero-risk, zero-waste, nuclear generators. This is old technology – my associates in the US have been pushing for this for 20+ years but were ignored. Now the Chinese will lead the way in dumping uranium based nuclear tech for clean, safe alternatives.

   A link to read: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/the-reactor-that-saves-itself-safe-nuclear-does-exist-and–china-leads-the-way-with-thorium-20110323-1c6eb.html?from=age_ft

   Conclusion: (a) Long-term outlook on uranium is very negative; Long-term outlook on thorium extremely positive (expect 1,000+% growth over 10 years).

   (b) There are lies, damn lies and statistics. The graph Chris presented is extraordinarily misleading for only showing one very inappropriate metric for the dangers of nuclear power. The damage cannot be measured in immediate deaths. Use an economic measure of damage, one that factors in externalities.

   SR

6. 

   Chris MacIntosh April 20, 2011 Reply

   Thanks Simon.

   Kudos for critical thinking. What you’ll realise is that I never actually said I agreed or disagreed. I wanted to go through the critical logical thinking process and I’m thrilled you’ve done that.

   On that note: The data provided compares apples with apples. Immediate deaths from energy sources. If we are to take into account externalities then we would have to look into externalities for all the other energy sources and this would encompass a different set of parameters and result in a different set of results.

   I read a report by ABT Associates http://www.abtassociates.com/who had researched coal related deaths in the USA. According to their findings these amount to 30,000 deaths a year from fine particle pollution, and I would guess that the rates in China, India, Pakistan etc are in order of magnitude higher. We would have to take into consideration things like acid rain and crop failure. These translate into deaths in the emerging markets of the world. Related to crude oil we would have to take into account oil spills, damaged coral reefs and livelihoods of fisherman. Heck to be thorough we would take into account the deaths from wars fought over each energy source.

   In short any statistic will always have flaws in it. Its only data. It doesn’t have an opinion and as such that is why we can rely on it more often than not.