"Clean" natural gas pipeline scar

ByRod Adams

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (seems like just yesterday) I took a few days off from work, blogging and podcasting to take a hike in the woods. It was a great trip and provided a needed attitude adjustment. Sometimes urban life can get a bit trying. We saw some great scenery and reminded ourselves that the world is not really teeming with people; we often went for hours without seeing a single soul and had our campsites to ourselves for two out of the three nights we were out.

The Appalachian Trail, however, is not totally remote from people. It crosses roads, is getting awfully close to suburbs, and is often crossed by power lines or gas pipeline clearings. I thought that this picture captures pretty well a little known aspect of using natural gas – though the pipes are buried and not visible in urban environments, they are not compatible with trees and still result in the same kinds of vegetation free pathways (established and enforced through the generous application of herbicides) that are common to power lines.

Rod Adams
Rod Adams

Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.

Similar Posts

  • NIRS, Natural Gas and Aggressive Competition For Calvert Cliffs Unit 3

    ByRod Adams

    Southern Maryland Newspapers Online has published a article titled Reactor under microscope that provides some interesting details about Constellation Energy’s offer to sell its stake in Unistar to EDF. It describes a letter from Constellation’s Mike Wallace expressing a strong desire on the part of Constellation’s management to encourage and assist with the project, even…

  • The Economist Discusses Nuclear Safety

    ByRod Adams

    A commenter here on Atomic Insights pointed to a couple of interesting articles published by The Economist, a well respected publication that has never been much of a fission fanzine. One of the articles, published on March 19, 2009, was titled The critical issue of safety. Here is a quote from that article that demonstrates…

  • Public Versus Private Power – It Is Time To Reopen The Discussion

    ByRod Adams

    As a student of the electrical power industry’s history, I have found many stories of a long running competition between public and private power suppliers. For most of my life, this discussion has been rather muted, with private forces seeming to have conquered the battlefield. The vast majority of the electrical power in the US…

  • Betting for consumers on the volatile price of natural gas

    ByRod Adams

    Decision makers in the regulated part of the business of producing electricity have short memories when it comes to the behavior of natural gas prices, but long memories when it comes to the potential for nuclear power plant construction costs to get out of hand. They publicly worry about the “bet the company” proposition of…

  • PBMR new contract developments

    ByRod Adams

    The PBMR project continues to make steady progress. In the past week, two important contracts have been signed. One, with the German firm SGL Carbon is for graphite core internals, and one with SNC-Lavalin Murray and Roberts (SLMR), a joint venture company of Canada’s SNC-Lavalin and South African Murray & Roberts covers phase one of…