The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the body representing the interests of state public utility commissions before the federal government, on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) for not suspending fees associated with the now-defunct Yucca Mountain nuclear spent-fuel repository.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has finished developing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions requirements for several industries as mandated by Congress, on Tuesday said it would extend the reporting deadline for companies reporting 2010 GHG data under the Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule from March 31, 2011, to an unspecified date in late summer.

American Electric Power (AEP) and First Energy Corp. will withdraw applications for state regulatory approval of the $2 billion high-voltage Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) project following an announcement by regional grid operator PJM Interconnection that the project has been shelved.

California’s Senate on Thursday voted 26-11 to require the state’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to get 33% of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020—up from the 20% currently required. The bill, whose increased renewable portfolio standard (RPS) was set by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 2009 executive order, now goes to the Assembly, where it is expected to pass.

The New Hampshire House last week approved, by a veto-proof vote of 246-104, legislation that would withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program established in the Northeast. The bill is now headed to the Senate, where it is expected to pass.

Old Dominion Electric Cooperative’s (ODEC’s) announcement on Monday that it will withdraw participation in and ownership of a third-generation reactor planned for construction by Dominion Virginia Power at its North Anna Nuclear Power Station in Louisa County, Va., will not change its plans to build the potential project, Dominion said.

The three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Friday threw out a motion to shelve proceedings for the Yucca Mountain license case through May 20. The judges also asked the NRC to explain why it whited-out portions of a report assessing the safety of the Nevada nuclear waste repository that was released last week.

Morgan County, Illinois will host a sequestration site for carbon dioxide captured by the Department of Energy’s revamped $1.3 billion FutureGen pilot project. The FutureGen Alliance said on Monday that site best supported the overall mission of the project cost-effectively.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel dismissed the last objection filed by anti-nuclear groups and a Texas lawmaker to block expansion of Luminant Energy’s Comanche Peak nuclear plant.

A federal judge in Brazil on Friday ordered immediate suspension of a license permitting construction of the controversial 11,233-MW Belo Monte dam complex. The license was recently issued by Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, and it would have allowed dam-building consortium Norte Energia to begin clearing forestland on the margins of the Amazon’s Xingu River.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday finalized a $96.8 million Recovery Act–supported loan guarantee to Neal Hot Springs, a project sponsored by U.S. Geothermal, to construct a 23-MW geothermal project in Oregon’s Malheur County.

France in January announced its contribution to the wave of small and modular reactors (SMRs): a submarine-like nuclear plant that can be submerged in waters 60 meters (m) to 100 m deep and several kilometers offshore.

Steam turbines convert the thermal energy in motive steam to rotating mechanical energy, and the generator converts that energy into electrical power. One important requirement for safe and reliable operation is preventing water induction in the steam turbine and avoiding water hammer in the steam piping system. ASME standards present the design guidelines for removing moisture from steam lines; this article explains a practical design process.

Brazil’s environment agency, IBAMA, in January issued a partial installation license that allows for construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam complex, an 11,233-MW project estimated to cost some 19.6 billion reals (US$11.7 billion), to begin on the margins of the Amazon’s Xingu River. Saying the project is needed to meet soaring electricity demand when completed, as planned in 2015, the government gave license to dam-building consortium Norte Energia to begin clearing 238.1 hectares (588 acres) of forestland.

Europe installed 308 new offshore wind turbines in 2010—a 51% increase in installed offshore capacity over the previous year, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) said in new figures released this January. The 883 MW of new capacity—worth some €2.6 billion—were installed at nine wind farms in five countries, bringing the continent’s total offshore installed wind capacity to 2,964 MW.

A new article in Bioscience looks again at the connection between economic growth and energy demand, shedding little light on the subject and further demonstrating the limits of neo-Malthusianism. Of course there is a relationship between energy and economic growth, but what is it? No answers here; only a doomsday prediction.

At the beginning of 2011, German firm E.ON began operation of its new 417-MW Malzenice gas and steam turbine power station in Slovakia’s Trnava region, near the country’s capital, Bratislava (Figure 5). The facility, which is expected to generate more than 300 billion kWh annually, boasts an efficiency of 58%—which E.ON claims is among the “highest in Europe.”

The long-struggling uranium business, hoping that demand for nuclear fuel will increase, is slowly stretching its muscles and strengthening exploration and production efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Lab-scale experiments have shown that seawater and calcium could effectively remove most of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) from a natural gas power plant’s flue gas stream. A large fraction of the captured gas could then be converted into dissolved calcium bicarbonate—which, pumped into the sea, could be beneficial to the ocean’s marine life, says a researcher representing both the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) Carbon Management Program and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The winter of 2010-2011 has been a cold one for financing renewable energy projects. That’s the weather report from a recent project financing meeting in New Orleans, a survey of developers and builders done by a large Minnesota construction company, and accounts from those in the financial trenches.

GDF SUEZ, RWE, and Iberdrola Pull out of Cernavoda Nuclear Expansion. French power company GDF SUEZ, Germany’s RWE, and Spain’s Iberdrola on Jan. 20 said they would no longer participate in a project to build Units 3 and 4 of the Cernavoda nuclear project in Romania. The companies cited “economic and market uncertainties surrounding the […]

Don’t get fixated on the Environmental Protection Agency’s moves against carbon dioxide. The real action is in the area of conventional air pollutants.

The popular television show Mythbusters uses pseudo-scientific means to examine and often expose as fiction familiar urban myths. After made-for-television lab tests, the myth is then classified as either a fabrication (“busted”), entirely possible (“confirmed”), or somewhere in between (“plausible”).

In the past, members of a utility’s engineering staff spent their career designing and building new power plants. Today, many utility engineers find that opportunity comes around only once in a career. To fill the experience gap, an “owner’s engineer” company can add to a utility’s team a cadre of highly qualified power engineers who focus on avoiding design errors and keeping the project on schedule.

While the cybersecurity threat escalates asymmetrically, federal agencies may be shortchanging cybersecurity while developing smart grid standards designed to protect the emerging smart grid from attack.

Thule (“Two Lee”) Air Base is a 254–square mile base located in a coastal valley in the northwestern corner of Greenland, within the Arctic Circle. The base, the U.S.’s northernmost military installation, is nestled between mountains and surrounded by icebergs and glaciers as far as the eye can see.

How does your company prepare and share fossil plant performance data? What data are important, and how much effort is required to collect and report the data? What are the most important statistics for reporting key fossil plant operations? The latest EUCG benchmarking survey reveals the favored fossil performance metrics at several of the largest utilities in eight key categories.

Critical minerals—such as rare earth metals—are important to many new energy technologies. However, the U.S. Department of Energy is concerned that foreign control of supply, particularly by China, could limit the ability of these technologies to develop fully, so the DOE is developing a strategy to keep the supply chain open. Meanwhile, some analysts say China is playing a losing game with its hold on the minerals.

Beginning each spring and continuing through the fall, backpressure readings at Rosebud Operating Services Inc. indicated substantial drops in the condenser’s efficiency. Increased backpressure results in higher net plant heat rate and a corresponding measurable decrease in power generation.

As U.S. electric utilities watch increasing numbers of older workers leave the workforce, they are left with a shrinking pool of experienced personnel. To meet this growing challenge, a number of educational programs are being offered to help younger workers take advantage of career opportunities in the electric power industry.