Adding to the bullish viewpoint permeating around in the natural gas markets is the ongoing slow return of nuclear power generating capacity that has plagued the power industry throughout the entire “shoulder” season and it is currently looking like it will linger as we enter the summer cooling season. As of today there is still about 8,000 MW of capacity shut down over and above the level for last year for the same week, as well as about 7,400 MW more than the five-year average for the same week. Not only are the outages this year far above last year and the five-year average, but the return of many of these facility from maintenance has been much slower than the normal return rate, resulting in new power-related requirements on natural gas. Even with a modicum of cooling over the past weekend, the power output for the week ending June 2nd rose almost 12% from the previous week as well as being over 5% above last year at this time according to Reuters. A lot of this additional power requirement would normally be taken care of by nuclear generated capacity, but with the large amount of nuclear capacity still down, the incremental power requirements are falling on natural gas.