TO THE EDITOR:
Eric Boyers’ Sept. 26 letter advocating investment in nuclear energy offers an interesting but poorly researched argument. First, his claim that divested funds should be reinvested in nuclear energy increases risk to the energy sector of UNC’s portfolio.
The leading counterargument against divestment of any sort is that restricting investments automatically increases risk in a portfolio. However, research shows that divesting from coal and then redistributing the funds throughout a screened portfolio increases risk only by an insignificant amount that does not harm purchasing power. Isolating the divested money within one form of energy could increase risk within the energy portfolio, leaving UNC subject to larger financial losses if nuclear does not work out.
Second, Boyers’ weak rationale advocating nuclear power demonstrates the harm of presuming to know more about reinvestment than the experts of UNC’s endowment management company. Even if Boyers is correct that regulations on nuclear plants are unnecessary, these regulations still exist, meaning investors need to account for the increased costs.
Moreover, Boyers’ arbitrary coffee example simply takes the concentrated deaths of nuclear incidents and distributes them across entire populations, thereby marginalizing the severity of the incidents. But the harmful nature of these incidents shows in their concentrated severity — nuclear plants pose high risk even if net damage is proportionally small compared to population size. Accidents also impose sudden, but persistent shocks to surrounding economies.
I would like to see Boyers offer a more thorough cost-benefit analysis before advocating a nuclear oriented extension of the Beyond Coal campaign.
Anurag Angara ’16
Economics
