NEI's Energy Markets Report - September 24

NEI's Energy Markets Report - September 24 - 28, 2007

Here's a summary of what went on in the energy markets last week:

Electricity peak prices rose between $2-16/MWh at all hubs except for ERCOT. The eastern hubs, NEPOOL and PJM West, increased by $8/MWh and $16/MWh last week due to unseasonably hot weather at the beginning of the week (see pages 1 and 3).

Gas prices at the Henry Hub rose from $6.22/MMBtu to $6.26/MMBtu. By the end of 2008, U.S. liquefied natural gas import capacity is expected to double to more than 10 Bcf per day (EIA). Total U.S. gas consumption in 2006 averaged about 60 Bcf per day (see pages 1 and 3). Gas futures at the Henry Hub for September 2008 averaged nearly $8/MMBtu (see page 2).

Nuclear plant capacity availability averaged 91 percent last week. Six reactors began refueling outages last week while two were in maintenance. River Bend’s unexpected shut down is under investigation and Browns Ferry 3 was down briefly for drywell leak inspections (see pages 2 and 4).

Cushing OK WTI oil prices increased $3.31 to $82.26/barrel two weeks ago. Crude oil prices that week surpassed the $80/barrel threshold reaching as high as $83.85/barrel on September 20. As EIA speculated, the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower interest rates continues to have an effect on rising crude oil prices. Crude oil futures averaged $78.04/barrel for September 2008 (see pages 1, 2 and 3).

For the report click here. It is also located on NEI's Financial Center webpage.

Comments

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.

What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog