On the Periodic Table of Elements, the symbols Kr, Ne, He stand for krypton, neon, and helium, three of the so-called noble gases. Noble gases are chemically stable, and can be easily overlooked because they are colorless and odorless. They have boiling and melting points that are close together, meaning that they have a very narrow range of temperatures at which they are liquid. And noble gases have industrial applications in lighting, welding, and lasers.

On the New York Stock Exchange, KR, NE, and HE stand for Kroger, Noble, and Hawaiian Electric Industries. Do these companies exhibit similar characteristics of stability, a tendency to be overlooked, and scarce liquidity? Well, no analogy is perfect, especially one as arbitrary as this. But here's a look at these stocks nonetheless.

Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) is the largest traditional grocery chain in the U.S. (though Wal-Mart is the largest seller of groceries). Kroger has more than 2,400 supermarkets under several different names, as well as more than 750 convenience stores.

The US government hopes that a large number of nuclear plants will be built in the US over the next 20 years to cut the country's need for oil. But GE (NYSE: GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt says they will not be built without incentives from the Feds.

According to the FT, "Immelt said only five to 10 US nuclear power projects were likely to go ahead unless there was a carbon-pricing framework to create incentives for utilities to build more." That may be true, but GE should be quiet about championing aid for building those facilities. GE and Hitachi (NYSE: HIT) have a joint venture to build nuclear plants, and the parties would not want to be seen as sell-serving.

The comments raise a difficult issue. The government and utilities both know that the long-term future of cheap oil looks bad. But building nuclear plants take years, is expensive, and requires passing government safety standards. Over the next decade it may actually be cheaper to continue to use fossil fuels even it the price of oil stays high.

GE will make a lot of money on the move to nuclear fuel, but that does not mean that its call for government help is wrong.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Pennsylvania-based energy company Allegheny Energy, Inc. (NYSE: AYE) posted mixed results for 1Q 2007 earnings. On the positive side, retail sales of energy increased 5%, plant efficiency increased, operating revenues increased $2 million, and debt expense declined by $8.2 million.. On the negative side, coal costs were up by $13.5 million, wiping out all the gains in increased sales and plant efficiency. Retail market prices for energy were down further eroding the gain produced by increased sales volume. Net income for the quarter was down by $4.5 million to $109.7 million or $.65 EPS. EBITDA for 1Q 2007 was $312.6 million, a decrease of $9.5 million.

Now for the bad news. The West Virginia Public Service Commission just recently ordered Allegheny Energy to decrease rates by $132 million to 2 Allegheny Enengy subsidiaries, while allowing Allegheny Enegy to pass on a $126 million fuel charge to customers. Net loss to Allegheny Energy is an additional $6 million. This is, relatively speaking, not that big a deal for Allegheny Energy, which posts annual revenues in excess of $3 billion. But the company did get slapped around in public for being heavy-handed in trying to push more costs than allowed onto customers. Its long term growth prospects are not rosy. There is growing opposition to its new power line project in its transmission area in West Virginia, Pennsylavia and Maryland. It's P/E multiple, 27.63, is the highest among its competitors while its EPS, $1.87, is the lowest. Allegheny Energy suspended dividend payments in December 2002 and has yet to reinstitute them. None of its cost factors are going to change for the better in the immediate future. It is best to look elsewhere for utility stock investment possibilities. The stock recently closed at $51.81, down $1.10.

New York City energy supplier Consolidated Edison of New York (NYSE: ED) is in the midst of an ambitious $1.4 billion investment program to ensure uninterrupted electricity delivery even during summer peak demand months. Con Edison is investing in upgrades in both its infrastructure delivery system and its emergency response system. On Long Island alone, Con Edison has spent $90 million to upgrade facilities in order to prevent another blackout like the one that hits Queens during summer 2006. Con Edison has inspected 6,000 electric structures; installed 25 miles of secondary underground cable; installed 101 network transformers; and added microprocessor relays to detect equipment malfunctions promptly.

Queens was not the only borough to receive attention. Con Edison spent almost $500 million on construction of three substations in the Bronx and Manhattan; allocated $739 million for distribution system upgrades and $137 million for transmission upgrades. Con Edison will spend $7.5 billion over the next five years to upgrade its transmission and distribution system, as well as to add capacity. Electricity demand in its service area has grown annually by close to 200 megawatts, the equivalent of adding an additional 200,000 homes every year to the grid. For summer 2007, Con Edison has projected a peak load of 13,575 megawatts, of which 80% is reserved for New York City use.

In case all these upgrades nonetheless fail, Con Edison has also beefed up its emergency response system, including an enhanced system for tracing outages; the installation of 500,000 smart meters that can automatically send outage messages; new procedures for dispatching repair crews; and 250 new telephone lines to tell them where they need to go.

When General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) reports earnings Friday, the question on investors' minds will be whether the company's industrial and entertainment businesses can pick up the slack from the decline from the finance side.

Most of GE's growth has come from is finance businesses over the past decade, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). That's going to change because its WMC Mortgage unit is a big player in the suprime mortgage market which has recently melted down.

WMC Mortgage rival New Century Financial Inc. (NYSE: NEW) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It remains unclear how badly the General Electric business has been affected though Reuters recently reported that WMC Mortgage had some of the worst-performing loans in the benchmark index for home equity asset-backed securities.

General Electric's strength is that if one of its businesses falters, others can make up for the shortfall.

Consider power generation. Remember that about 245 gigawats of new generating capacity will be needed by 2030, which is equal to about 817 new nuclear power plants, according to data from the Energy Information Administration posted on the Web site of the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group.

NBC Universal, long a laggard, is showing signs of life thanks to improvements in the NBC television network. No one should buy GE's stock just because they like "Deal or No Deal." That unit is the smallest by revenue, while its Infrastructure business, which includes power generation is the largest.

Analysts are expecting General Electric to have earnings of 44 cents on revenue of $39.83 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts and Texas Pacific Group, whose $45 billion buyout of TXU Corp. (NYSE:TXU) is the biggest deal ever, may reap huge profits from seven aging gas-fired power plants that the Texas utility had mothballed, according to Bloomberg News.

TXU shut most of the plants in 2005 because of soaring fuel costs and excess capacity in the market. That's the case no longer. Bloomberg points out that Texas officials are expecting a shortfall in generation by 2009. New power plants take a long time to build, so TXU is sitting on a potential goldmine.

The company's service area features scorching hot summers and warm weather during other times of the year. For example, today it's 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny today in Dallas.

Remember that Warren Buffett paved the way for the private equity rush to electric utilities with his purchase of MidAmerican Energy and PacifiCorp. Private equity players then realized the huge cash flow these generate -- pun intended -- and are continuing to look.

The question isn't whether another huge utility will go private but when.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. Cast your vote for the most overused buzzword.

On election night, CNN had a gaggle of pundits and bloggers opining about the Democratic takeover of the U.S. House and Senate. Among the throng was a journalist from Newsweek. That was amazing. On election night, a time when CNN gets big ratings, the Time Warner (NYSE:TWX)-owned network turned to someone who works for a publication that is a fierce rival of its own Time magazine. It makes one wonder, whatever happened to corporate synergies?

Executives repeated that phrase ad nauseam during the go-go 90s. I always got the impression that big investors took these estimates with a grain -- make that a truckload -- of salt. Synergy was the main selling point of the Time Warner-AOL merger. Then, the word took off in various spellings, including the utility Cinergy, now a part of Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK). There's Corporate Synergies, a benefits consulting company based in New Jersey, and Idaho-based Provider Synergies, which manages company spending on drugs.

The catch phrase resurfaced this year when General Motors Corporation (NYSE:GM) mulled over an alliance with Renault SA and Nissan Motor Corp. Bloomberg News reported that "GM had figured an alliance would cut its purchasing costs by $1 billion to $2 billion; the Renault estimate was much higher, a person familiar with the talks said."

US Airways (NYSE:LCC) estimated that it could get "actual savings" of $1.65 billion over two years by taking over rival Delta Air Lines, Inc. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) pointed out in its press release announcing the YouTube deal that the video sharing site "will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community." It will be interesting to see if everyone remains a happy Google family in the coming years.

Jonathan Berr is the editor of http://www.desperateinvestors.com.