Energy Supply Worries Are Over! Natural Gas Resource Estimate Increased by 3%!
I am in a snarky mood this morning. Please forgive me while I try to explain the sources of my wry amusement – and my continuing worries that keep me…
As regular readers know, I harbor cynical thoughts about the motivations of some anti-nuclear commentators. I honestly believe that many of them are supportive of continued market domination by coal, oil and/or gas. I even have a series of blogs with the keyword of “smoking gun” (go ahead, do a search in that little block at the top left of your Atomic Insights window) that points to places where the source is a bit more open about motivation – “smoking gun” articles on Atomic Insights are generally those where an anti-nuclear comment comes directly from someone with an admitted interest in selling more coal, oil or gas.
In all fairness, however, I need to remind myself that there are some people who sell fossil fuel that say very nice and supportive things about nuclear energy and new nuclear power plant construction. I have decided on a new key word – Kevlar Vest – to indicate a post where I point to a statement or commentary by a person with a clear interest in building markets for coal, oil, or gas who comes out in strong support of new nuclear power plant development. (It is not enough to accept the existence of current nuclear plants with a “damning by faint praise” flavor. That kind of support will not earn a Kevlar Vest.)
The first Kevlar Vest goes to Rich Kinder, chairman and CEO of Kiinder Morgan Energy Partners LLP. According to a recent Reuters article titled Kinder: CO2 policy needs natgas, nuclear focus here is what Kinder Morgan does:
Kinder Morgan owns or operates 35,000 miles of gas and oil pipelines and 170 fuel and coal terminals and is building a major gas pipeline from the Rocky Mountains to the East.
In the same Reuters article linked above he is quoted as saying:
“To think we’re going to solve this with solar and wind power is ludicrous,” Kinder, chairman and CEO of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP, told the Reuters Global Energy Summit.
“If you want to knock this thing,” he said of cutting fossil fuel emissions to slow global warming, “you’d go to more natural gas and you would go to more nuclear. That is far more effective.”
It is not surprising that he put his own product at the top of the list, but at least nuclear came next and he forthrightly dismissed the notion that solar and wind could solve our energy challenges.
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.
Watch the latest business video at video.foxbusiness.com Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a self proclaimed libertarian think tank, recently visited Fox Business to explain his opposition to nuclear energy. The episode was on the Stossel Show and is called Nuclear Power: Republican Junk Economics?. If you listen really closely, you will hear him using…
Conventional wisdom tells us that “Environmentalists” worried about one or more of the below complaints have influenced world opinion and encouraged the current negative investment perception that surrounds new nuclear power plants: Nuclear plants are not completely safe Nuclear energy technology leads to dispersal of nuclear weapons capability Nuclear energy plants are massive and lead…
It is virtually impossible to get an educational institution to understand something when its revenue depends on its audience not understanding it. – Rod Adams, Stanford’s New Natural Gas Initiative, Atomic Insights, May 30, 2015 Aside: In case the allusion doesn’t work for you, the above is deliberately structured to align with a quote from…
A commenter on my last smoking gun report claimed that it did not provide direct evidence of antinuclear activity by the beneficiaries – in that case, the people selling LNG tankers to a market that is growing because of the forced shutdown of operable nuclear power plants in Japan and Germany. Today I ran across…
We’ve been repeatedly told that 97% of climate scientists agree that CO2 emissions from human activity are a major cause of climate change. Scientists who question that assertion are villified as “climate change deniers” and marginalized as representing a fringe point of view. They’re frequently accused of being paid by fossil fuel interests. Politicians, journalists…
I have some very engaged readers. Some of you even follow up if you send something interesting and I do not get around to sharing it with all of you. Daniel sent me a scan of an advertisement that appeared in the Courier-Mail out of Queensland, Australia in November 2007. it is a very straightforward…