Daily Energy Standup Episode #75 – U.S. Maritime Industry needs Nuclear Power – China demand? – Godzillia will not return on Fukushima water release

Daily Standup Top Stories

Advanced Nuclear Power Could Transform U.S. Maritime Industry

The US maritime sector has suffered a steep decline since its peak in the immediate post-WWII era with the numb

er of American flagged and constructed vessels plummeting. The advent of marinized nuclear power offers an […]

Oil Price Rally Unravels On China’s Underwhelming GDP Growth Target

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The Inflation Reduction Act Is Very Good At One Thing: Making Billionaires Richer

The nation’s biggest solar-panel maker, First Solar, sells $3.5 billion a year of its “thin-film” solar panels made with exotic “cadmium telluride” semiconductors that work well in hot and humid regions and in low light. […]

No, the Fukushima water release is not going to kill the Pacific Ocean

Japanese authorities are preparing to release treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, nearly 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This will relieve pressure on more than 1,000 storage tanks, creating much-needed space for […]

Western US cities vote to move ahead with novel nuclear power plant

​ NuScale plans to build a demonstration small modular reactor (SMR) power plant at the Idaho National Laboratory. If successful, the six-reactor, 462 megawatt Carbon Free Power Project will run in 2030. NuScale said in […]

US natgas up 3% to 5-week high on record LNG feedgas, colder weather forecasts

​ U.S. natural gas futures rose about 3% to a five-week high on Friday, with the amount of gas flowing to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants set to hit a daily record high […]

 


Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro
02:31 – Advanced nuclear power could transform U.S. maritime industry
05:16 – Inflation Reduction Act is very good at one thing making billionaires richer
08:54 – Fukushima water release is not going to kill the Pacific Ocean
12:22 – Western cities vote to move ahead with novel nuclear power plant
17:05 – LNG demand still in U.S. hits fresh high nat gas prices tumbled to $2.50, six off $3
20:01 – Outro


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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Michael Tanner: [00:00:14] What is going on. Everybody, welcome to another edition of the Daily Energy News Beat Stand up here on this gorgeous March 7 to 2023. As always, I’m your humble correspondent, Michael Tanner, coming to you from an undisclosed location here in Dallas, Texas, joined by the executive producer of the show, the purveyor of the show and the director and publisher of the world’s greatest website, Energy News becomes Stuart Curly, my man. How we doing today? [00:00:37][23.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:37] It’s a beautiful day in neighborhood and I’m with this brutal day. [00:00:41][3.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:42] It’s been a long day. It’s actually been a very productive day for me. So I feel on top of things. But it’s a technique. Who is We record this on a monday. I’m happy just to be rolling over and and finally, finally on Tuesday. But you have a great, great news list lined up for the show today. Stew, First up, we’ve got advanced nuclear power could transform the U.S. maritime industry. Next up, we have the Inflation Reduction Act is very good at one thing, making billionaires richer. That’s a pretty interesting dive. [00:01:10][27.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:10] And I’m excited to hear what Stu has on that. Please. That next headline is just frightening. No, the Fukushima water release is not going to kill the Pacific Ocean. Now, I’m nervous that some people think it will kill the Pacific Ocean. So Stu will have to call my fears about whatever is going on with this nuclear waste release out in Japan. Next, we have Western US cities vote to move ahead with novel nuclear power plant. I think that’s really interesting. Stew will cover what that means for the nuclear industry. [00:01:38][28.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:39] He’ll kick it over to me. I’ll cover What happened in the oil markets were sustained above 80 today, which is great. And on the natural gas side, the headlines, all you need to know is there was the word implode. So you can guess what that means. I’ll save the meat and potatoes for later and then I will cover quickly. Stu and I are going to talk about an LNG agreement between a large U.S. onshore producer and one of the largest oil and gas trading firms. I think it signals some of the stuff that Stu has been talking about. [00:02:09][29.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:09] We’ll cover all that and a bag of chips, guys. But first, check us out on the world’s greatest website WWL Energy news become dashboard that energy needs backup your best combination for data and news we are hard at work at V2 again energy newsweek.com Check out the description below. It has links to all of the articles which are available on that website. Stu, I’m out of breath. Where would you like to begin? [00:02:30][20.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:30] Hey, let’s start with advanced nuclear power could transform U.S. maritime industry. You know, I’ve always been a fan of nuclear. I got to hand it to the U.S. military with taking, you know, the charge. Over all these years, U.S. maritime industry has taken a third street, you know, seat in the back row. They have not done very well. [00:02:52][22.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:53] And I think that if we really used some of the technology that is talked about in here is a molten salt reactor, MSR molten salt reactor is an advanced nuclear reactor that’s fueled by molten fuel salts rather than solid fuel elements and runs a very high temperature between 500 degrees Celsius to 700 degrees Celsius. Pretty darn cool on this. And I mean, this engine could flat change the maritime carbon and output and everything else. I think this was really one of the best stories I had read in a long time. [00:03:36][43.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:37] I do believe, and I’ve always thought that it’s surprising that we only have nuclear submarines and not nuclear ships like these big large container ships that roll around. So I’m very interested and I think this is a great early proof of concept. Again, I think the problem with nuclear is the cost. I think that’s critical in this development is can the cost be commercial enough to allow for multiple different use cases? [00:04:02][24.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:03] I yes, it is coming around the corner and the nukes are getting smaller. However, take a note that Russia has had a fleet of nuclear powered icebreakers for a long time there. I mean, so the nuclear fleet around the world are safe. I mean, I really, truly believe if they’re operated correctly. Absolutely. You know, and we have aircraft carriers that are nukes, we we only have we do. [00:04:34][31.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:34] We do. [00:04:35][0.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:36] So there are ships that are nuclear powered. [00:04:38][2.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:39] So I just I love how you just call them. We’re making the nukes smaller. It’s is you can’t call them nukes because that just now my the hair on the back of my head just goes ding nukes. You know what I mean? [00:04:48][9.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:49] Well, yeah, yeah, I agree. Now, I still keep going back to my my buddies over in the Copenhagen Atomics, that thorium reactor. I’m hot on that. So give me some thorium and give me some Copenhagen atomic. I really can’t wait for them to get them rolling. [00:05:05][16.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:06] You heard it here first on the B podcast, guys. Thorium reactors. What’s next? Do. [00:05:10][4.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:11] All right. Well. You don’t believe that, Andy? [00:05:12][1.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:13] Not quite. [00:05:13][0.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:14] Okay. All right. Inflation Reduction Act is very good at one Make it one thing making billionaires richer. For our podcast listeners, the article has a picture of, I believe, Captain Kangaroo’s son. If you don’t know who Captain Kangaroo is, this kid looks just like Captain Kangaroo. But anyway, fair haired Fred Abramson, 84, he’d be about the right age for Captain Kangaroo son. Instead, Denver based software entrepreneur made his initial fortune in 1990s publishing software Quirk Express. [00:05:52][37.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:53] But he’s then had another investment in branding. He made West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin for his recent good fortune. The Inflation Reduction Act. And I believe that Dan Bonjean, he calls it the Porkulus bill is actually correct. These are about the solar panels. Even before the bill, First Solar had a backlog, which is now ballooned to more than 16 gigawatts. That means billions in tax credits for First Solar and ample incentive to build more factories in Ohio, Indiana and India. [00:06:33][40.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:34] Osborne thinks that the company can deliver these expectations. Earnings could grow to $24 a share by 2026. The number one problem with the Inflation Reduction Act. It has zero ability to to reduce the inflation. It’s going to put all of the money into renewable pork and it’s going to be driving a lot of foreign countries coming in to tap into that money. So he is a perfect example of a investor that is solar investment is worth $1 billion and is growing even more. So investors investing in solar are good. The rich get richer and the poor get the bill on their energy bill. [00:07:30][56.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:31] Yeah, I mean, it it comes as no surprise that when you hand out billions of dollars of subsidies that the rich who run the companies are going to just basically be able to swoop in and basically take all this. So that doesn’t come as a shock to me. [00:07:44][13.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:45] I do agree with by Joe’s analysis, this thing is full of a lot of pork. So to be again, we know how it’s getting doled out. If you’re in the renewable space, you’re going to have your hand out, you know, and it’s going to be interesting to see how all of this plays out. Do again, I’m not an expert. I’m not a political expert. So I don’t want to pontificate on how you go about fixing this other than there’s no reason to even pass this bill in the first place. [00:08:08][22.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:08] Well, the the one thing that I do am taking offense to is people saying that an article yesterday came out on Sunday or the day before and said $16 billion of subsidies were given back to oil and gas investors. That is not true. Stock buyback programs are going money that they’ve earned going back to investors. That’s not subsidies, but the other folks are calling those subsidies. So let’s get the word subsidy right. Okay. [00:08:46][37.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:47] What’s next? [00:08:47][0.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:48] Let’s that’s. Thanks for letting me have a1a rant. Okay. No, the Fukushima water release is not going to kill the Pacific Ocean. After we go into some of the stats in here. There are some things that are kind of funny about this. Michael, you hit it right on the nose. All right. Who thinks it’s going to be a bad thing? The storage tanks in Fukushima contain 1.3 million tons or equivalent of 500 Olympic sized swimming pools. [00:09:20][31.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:20] The reason they need to let the water out into the ocean is because they need to clean more of it. Tritium is a half life of 12.3 years, meaning in 100 years passes before the radioactivity is now negligible. Part of the problem is they’ve been able to filter it out. The filtering process of the of the nuclear waste in the water is very, very good. It’s a technology that is approved. Now, here’s where it is different than the poly chlorine that has been dumped around Ohio and is now being burned in the furnaces. [00:10:02][41.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:03] That cannot be simply filtered out. It has to be d molecules in order to be cleaned. You can filter radioactive material, you cannot filter Polish chlorides. So there is a significant difference. Dr. Chalmers was a guest on my podcast and it shows a true difference. I would rather go swimming outside of Fukushima as opposed to sorry, that was. Oklahoma. Way to talk again. If you, you know, it would almost be like us creating another Godzilla, you know. [00:10:42][38.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:43] Have you ever do you ever see the one Saturday Night Live skit where Godzilla was standing there and Baba Wawa was interviewing Godzilla and Baba Wawa goes, Mr. Godzilla, how do you do it? And he goes, This is my favorite movie. And for my podcast listeners, I’m going to demonstrate Godzilla. Oh. And he stay there. So he was a guy in a rubber suit. You’re not going to have Godzilla, even though it is in Japan. It’s not going to happen. And I feel very good about this way. It is not waste. [00:11:16][33.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:17] So I can stop stocking up on canned goods. [00:11:19][2.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:20] No, keep stocking up, because that’s Japan. And we are they’re taking the Ohio pollution. They’re putting it into incinerators with the dirt, and it’s being re-activated in shoved back into the atmosphere 30 miles away from Palestine, Ohio. So it is now really polluting the entire area of Ohio and east and going into more water. Not only did they make a disaster of it, they are pouring nuclear waste on this problem. I mean, it’s just despicable how they’re doing it. All right. Let’s go to the next one. Any questions? [00:12:02][42.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:03] No, I just. There’s nothing to say. [00:12:05][2.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:06] Yeah. I’m serious. The Biden administration on this is absolutely creating one of the it’s going to be worse than the Japanese nuclear regime. Yes, it’s going to be worse. All right. Let’s go to the next one. Western cities vote to move ahead with novel nuclear power plant. This has got some humor in it, if you can imagine me getting tickled at news stories, news scale. [00:12:34][27.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:34] I’ve interviewed one of their executives, news gals, a nice little company. I think that it is a small SMR reactor is actually a good thing. Small modular reactors plant at the Idaho National Laboratory. If successful, the six reactor 462 megawatt carbon free power project will run in 2030. New scale said in the target price for the power plant was $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous $58 per megawatt hour, a jump that increase concerns what gets me in. [00:13:14][40.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:15] This is the time that it took to get the approval processes done. The inflation has caused this thing to go up. We need to stop lollygagging on this and get it rolling on these nuclear plants or we won’t be able to do this. [00:13:36][21.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:37] When did they start? First try to permit this? [00:13:39][2.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:41] 2020. They bribed 1.35 billion over ten years for the project. But here’s the problem. Nuscale has been trying to do this for previous ten years to get it to this point. [00:13:52][11.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:53] Okay, so you’re talking. Yeah, inflation’s hit just a little bit retro. [00:13:59][5.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:59] You know, all Scooby and Shaggy are about ready to try to find another Scooby snack in the Scooby Snacks are going to be going. This is just unbelievable. We’ve got and it’s just the same thing with renewables. [00:14:12][12.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:13] We have the Inflation Reduction Act, but we’re not going to be able to get any more renewable on line because there’s nobody that can install these things because of regulatory problems. Same thing with nuclear. It’s the regulation, stupid, that’s causing all these problems now. [00:14:31][18.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:32] It is. So. Yeah. All right. [00:14:33][1.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:34] That’s it for me. [00:14:34][0.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:35] That’s it for you. Well, great articles. A lot of nuclear today. [00:14:39][4.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:39] I’m almost I feel glowing. My guess. [00:14:43][3.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:43] I’m zero. Don’t know how we should feel about it. [00:14:45][1.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:47] I love. [00:14:47][0.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:48] Finance wise. I think we saw pretty flat on the overall markets. S&P 500 and NASDAQ were both up early in the trading session, but only finished about a 10th and a half a per hour and a half a percentage point above their opening. So not much movement on the oil side. We did see prices sustain above $80, which is great to see. [00:15:07][18.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:07] We were all the way down to about 78 towards the open, but have currently trading. Around 8048 as we record this about 630. Again, I think the main push on the bulls side is going to be China demand. If you’ve got people coming out. We saw U.S. job reports comes in focus this week. We saw the Gun Bowl CEO who we’re going to talk about specifically with Chesapeake, come out and say they’re seeing increased oil supply flowing to China. [00:15:32][24.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:33] So there’s a lot of tea leaves out there specifically on that front that hopefully continue to push that bull case. Again, it’ll be interesting to see how those dynamics continue to play out. Again, I have a hard time seeing 85 plus on WTI. We see the 80 right now. I don’t know how much running room we have North, but again, remember that target Windows $100 for Brant. That’s what everyone keeps saying, that Brant sitting at 8731 as we record this about 630 here on the sixth. [00:15:58][25.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:58] So it’ll be interesting to see how high that number does go. I don’t think it’s going to get there, but again, time will tell and prove us either right or wrong. On the natural gas side, guys, as I mentioned in the open, the word, the headline coming out of nat gas, the intel, Stu included the word implode. [00:16:16][18.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:17] That title goes natural gas prices crash after, well, weather models implode and slash Fundamental support tells you all you need to know. We saw warmer weather do on the horizon, which is going to completely sort of chop off any bullish case that was having on natural gas. To give you an idea, we are expecting a peak, a 62 to 83 Bcf draw from our natural gas storage. Well, we usually see about 162 Bcf. [00:16:45][27.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:45] So you’re talking about a 50% decrease in the amount of withdrawals this week would correspond with that relatively warmer weather. It’s been significantly smaller draws year to date. The mainly the focus of the analysis there. We also did get some fresh numbers out of some private data supplier showing that LNG demand has hit a fresh high. [00:17:04][18.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:04] But it’s kind of funny. LNG demand still in U.S. hits fresh high nat gas prices tumbled to $2.50, six off $3. So it gives you an idea about how much actual export capacity we have, because if we at all had export capacity that could handle more natural gas, we would be pumping to it. But we just don’t. And, you know, again, coming back to myself, the overemphasis that I had on Freeport really hampered my long term vision of natural gas. [00:17:30][26.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:31] And going forward, I’m going to it’s going to be critical when I make decisions now, because we’ve learned the hard lessons. Do we have learned the hard lesson? Speaking of that, Stu, there’s one story I wanted to kind of cover that I want your opinion on, because this is something that you’ve been following closely internationally, all of these different long term LNG deals. Well, the United States company gets into it,. [00:17:50][19.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:50] Chesapeake Energy, they and GUNVOR, we just talked about them in the oil segment announced today a 15 year, 2 million tons LNG per year export LNG facility, which will specifically be marketed to the European markets. [00:18:07][16.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:08] That’s one of the larger export LNG deals, specifically from a U.S. company that’s out of the Haynesville SE2. So this is going to be an East Coast export. What are your thoughts on this? Talk me through what role, what you think the what’s going on here. [00:18:22][14.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:22] Well, it’s going to be indexed to the Japan Korean marker, the Jkm for a period of 15 years. This to me again, is going to be one of the things that will help solve some of the main issues out of Europe and in Asia, because this is the Japan Korean marker. It’s actually going to help the stabilize the LNG market. [00:18:49][27.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:50] Now, think about that. I mean, if you’ve got a 15 year contract for LNG, that’s exactly what was missing out of that whole political debacle that they call this beloved place, the EU. The EU is sitting there trying to think that they could go on and have the LNG. [00:19:08][18.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:09] So you’re seeing people back up and go, wait a minute, maybe a 15 year contract, not that bad, 17 years and 27. So and that’s what we even talked about on yesterday’s show, that you’re going to see Russia and China entering into a very long pipeline deal and China is going to be doing another pipeline deal with them. You’re going to see that you heard here saying and. [00:19:36][27.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:37] You heard it here. Second break and some. [00:19:38][1.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:39] News that. [00:19:40][1.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:41] Some random guy on Substack first wrote. [00:19:43][2.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:43] It. Now that was me. [00:19:44][0.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:45] So you got anything else to do? I’m done. [00:19:47][2.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:48] Now. That was a big day. [00:19:49][1.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:50] It was a lot of nuclear. So stay safe out there, everybody. But with that, we’re going to let you get out of here. Guys, Get back to work. Thanks for checking us out. World’s Greatest Energy podcast for Stuart Turley, I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:19:50][0.0]

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