POWER

Despite a trendy moniker and lots of hype and interest, the smart grid has been facing some major setbacks of late, as regulators and customers begin challenging some of the claims for what interconnected smart meters will deliver in the way of tangible benefits.

Steel piping systems are widely used at coal-fired power plants for a variety of purposes, including the conveying of coal ash slurry to nearby settling ponds, the transfer of limestone slurry to absorber spray towers for removal of SO₂ and dilute hydrochloric acid from flue gases, and for transporting away the calcium sulfate by-product of the flue gas desulfurization process.

Utilities are spending billions of dollars on nuclear plant uprate projects, and Southern Company has been offered $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees to build Vogtle Units 3 and 4 (although the final deal has yet to be signed). Meanwhile, other nuclear developers have slashed preconstruction spending as the cost of the “nuclear renaissance” becomes evident.

The University of California, San Diego (see “Smart Power Generation at UCSD”) is just one of many combined heat and power (CHP), or cogeneration, systems in the U.S. A 2008 report by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), “Combined Heat and Power: Effective Energy Solutions for a Sustainable Future,” notes that Texas has the most CHP capacity—much of it used by the petrochemical and petroleum refining industries. California ranks second, largely a result of “industrial demands, stringent air quality requirements, and effective policies that encourage adoption of CHP.”

The prospects of a worldwide nuclear power renaissance have spawned many plans for increasing uranium enrichment capacity. Could those plans swamp the world in SWUs?

When it comes to moving megaton items like feedwater heaters or recirculating pumps, conventional moving tools such as wheel rollers, cranes, hoists, and come-alongs may be virtually useless. In some cases, moving large components is dangerous in a space-constrained location surrounded by delicate process control equipment. Feedwater heater and recirculating pump removal and replacement are […]

Exelon Nuclear recently replaced the original motor-generator sets for its boiling water reactor (BWR) recirculation pumps at its Quad Cities Generating Station Unit 1 with adjustable-speed drives. We examine the actual energy savings, motor-starting characteristics, control accuracy and stability, and motor and cable thermal behavior of this retrofit project.

A sea change in thinking about how to deal with spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. appears to be on the policy and political horizon, rekindling battles last fought in the 1980s about how to pay for the disposal of nuclear waste and where to put it. Holes in the ground look increasingly unlikely.

Much like the shape-shifting substance it regulates, the mercurial enforcement rule that governs mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants has changed unpredictably several times in recent years.

Biomass energy has been an up-and-down industry for decades. As public awareness grows, it inevitably influences new tax legislation and environmental regulations. Two recent events have made the climate for development of this renewable resource even more volatile.

Here’s how, with almost no attention, recent financial reform legislation changes how business must deal with whistleblower employees and affects other seemingly nongermane issues.

The Atomic Energy Act originally established the length of a U.S. commercial nuclear reactor license as 40 years and made it renewable for another 20 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stated that it bases the length of these licenses (and the 50+ renewed licenses granted to date) not on any particular technical limitation but on whether the plant meets current safety requirements. Does this mean there could be reactor life after 60?

Part of a family of automated and semi-automated tube-cleaning accessories, the new Saflex 2000 makes tube bundle cleaning more productive because it can clean four times as many tubes in a given period as manual water jetting, says NLB Corp. Operating at pressures up to 40,000 psi, the semi-automated accessory cleans two tubes (ranging from […]

Regulations being proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could significantly affect the bulk power system’s reliability, a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) shows. The quasi-public agency recommends that the proposed rules provide sufficient time to procure replacement resources that would offset capacity reductions expected as a result of unit retirements and deratings from environmental control retrofits.

E.ON last week shelved plans to build its controversial Kingsnorth coal-fired plant in Kent, and it withdrew from the UK’s government competition to build the first of four planned large-scale pilot power plants to demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS). The company said the project could not meet “competition timescales.”

The Department of the Interior (DOI) on Monday approved the Blythe Solar Power Project—the largest solar energy project ever proposed to be built on public lands in the U.S.

Qinshan Phase II Unit 3—the first power station built during China’s 11th five-year plan period and the country’s 13th nuclear unit—started commercial operation last week. The unit is the second Chinese reactor to start up this year, following Ling Ao II, which began commercial operation this September.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and Savannah River Nuclear Solution, a partnership comprising Fluor, Northrop Grumman, and Honeywell, have agreed to explore the potential of deploying a prototype of the Generation IV PRISM reactor at a proposed demonstration of small modular reactor technologies at the Energy Department’s Savannah River site.

Électricité de France (EDF) is to acquire Constellation Energy’s 50% share in the companies’ joint venture, UniStar, for $140 million under an agreement reached on Tuesday.

The Department of Energy (DOE) teamed with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), and the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Tuesday to announce eight joint research awards totaling nearly $5 million to support siting and permitting of offshore energy facilities. The awards include projects harvesting power generated from offshore wind and waves, tides, currents, and ocean thermal gradients.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., Oct. 25, 2010 – Over the years, presidents have appointed energy secretaries with a variety of backgrounds: policy wonk, business person, political apparatchik, former elected official, military officer, even dentist. None have exactly worked out. Scratch that. None have worked out at all. The latest incarnation at the fortress-like Forrestal […]

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) on Thursday issued a recommendation to the electric power industry providing sensitive information about the so-called “AURORA vulnerability”—gaps in critical infrastructure protection concerning large motors and generators connected to the bulk power system.

The fight to keep the Yucca Mountain alive intensified last week as members of Congress demanded justification for an order by Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Gregory Jaczko that seeks to halt review of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) application to build the long-term nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) on Friday said it would conduct a legal and technical audit of cases concerning Duke Energy Indiana’s $3 billion Edwardsport gasification facility in which a former administrative law judge had presided.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday offered a $350 million conditional loan guarantee to develop the One Nevada Transmission Line (ON Line), a proposed 500-kV link that will run 235 miles and transmit 600 MW of mostly renewable energy. The project is the first transmission line to receive a federal loan guarantee.

A new $5 billion transmission project proposed by Trans-Elect and sponsored by Google, Good Energies, and Marubeni Corp. seeks to connect 6,000 MW from wind farms installed up to 20 miles off the Mid-Atlantic coast to the national grid.

Constellation Energy last week offered to sell its 50% stake in the UniStar joint venture to partner Électricité de France (EDF) for $1, plus $117 million in reimbursement costs—a price well below market value—in order to further the project and ensure future energy supplies for Maryland.

Nebraska-based Tenaska on Monday said it would sell a portion of interests in five power plants to Japanese energy firms Tyr Energy and Chubu Electric.

Constellation Energy last week rejected a $7.5 billion conditional loan guarantee offer from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a new reactor at its Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland with partner Électricité de France (EDF), saying the government’s proposed terms and conditions were “unworkable.”

Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy last week called for an evaluation of “alternative solutions” to execute a large-scale carbon capture plant whose construction is under way at the Mongstad refinery on the country’s western coast, after “theoretical studies” indicated health and environmental risks related to amine technology.