News

A report presented to China’s legislature on Monday by Premier Wen Jiabao could have positive implications for the country’s centrally owned grid and nuclear firms, but they could leave "thermal generators out in the cold," experts said.

In the keynote address to the CERAWeek 2012 conference in Houston on Tuesday, Helge Lund, president and CEO of Norway-based Statoil, urged the oil and gas industry to embrace a greater sense of responsibility in facing its current and future challenges.

Three Memorandums of Agreement (MOA) between the U.S. government entities and private companies signed on Friday will seek to leverage Savannah River’s land assets and energy facilities near Aiken, S.C., to support potential private sector development, testing, and licensing of prototype small modular reactor (SMR) technologies.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday announced a planned six-year $180 million initiative—including an initial commitment of $20 million this year—to accelerate the deployment of four offshore wind power projects in the U.S. The funds are subject to congressional appropriations.

Air Liquide introduced Scott brand 72.2 Certified ZAM (zero air material) to meet 40 CFR Part 75 regulations, which call for a continuous emission monitoring (CEM) system to be exposed to “zero air material” during testing protocols in order to qualify the accuracy of the instrument. Air Liquide achieves a balance between regulatory compliance certainty […]

KIMA Echtzeitsysteme’s fill-level measuring device, used for ball mills in the cement industry for over seven years, has now been adapted and developed for use in coal mills. A new fill-level sensor enables reliable fill-level measurements, even with fluctuations in coal quality or moisture levels. Tested over a period of several months, the SmartFill for […]

Silicon Designs, a designer and manufacturer of highly rugged industrial-grade MEMS capacitive accelerometer chips and modules, has introduced a ±5 g model to its 2011 industry best-selling 2210 accelerometer series. The low-noise, single-axis model 2210-005 accelerometer module incorporates high-quality MEMS capacitive sensing elements. Sensing elements are packaged within a compact, lightweight, anodized epoxy-sealed aluminum housing […]

METTLER TOLEDO’s Process Analytics Division announced the 2300Na sodium analyzer, which can be used in pure water treatment and power generation applications. The design of the METTLER TOLEDO Thornton 2300Na sodium analyzer is based on extensive instrumentation experience and is optimized to handle measurement challenges. Features of the sodium analyzer include fully automatic, unattended calibration, […]

The new CNGmass Coriolis flowmeter series from Endress+Hauser is approved by the National Type Evaluation Program (NTEP) in the U.S. and five other international standards organizations for custody transfer of compressed natural gas (CNG) and for fueling vehicles with CNG. Available in three common sizes from 3/8 inch to 1 inch, the CNGmass measures mass […]

Manufacturer of heavy-duty industrial vacuums and vacuum systems VAC-U-MAX introduces its updated Model 1020 Continuous Duty Industrial Vacuum. The VAC-U-MAX Model 1020 features a powerful positive displacement pump designed specifically for high-volume recovery of up to 5 tons per hour. It is also used in the recovery of heavy materials, including steel shot, foundry sand, […]

President Obama’s Jan. 24 State of the Union address did not convince me that the nation should, in his words, “double down” on future clean energy investment. America’s abundance of oil and gas should be the foundation upon which to build a comprehensive national energy policy, not subsidies for government-favored energy technologies and overreaching energy regulations.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) last week proposed a $428 million upgrade to the Pacific Direct Current Intertie, an 846-mile overhead transmission line that delivers hydropower and wind power between the Northwest and California. The line is one of the world’s longest and highest capacity transmission links.

A study conducted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and released by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on Tuesday shows that enough physical and geographical locations exist in the U.S. to site 952 GW of new advanced coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS), dry-cooled and water-cooled concentrating solar power (CSP), and large and small nuclear reactors. The study also suggests that plant siting opportunities exist for compressed air energy storage (CAES) in 38% of the U.S.

Houston-based GenOn is the latest of a string of power firms to announce planned power plant closures in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey. The company formed in December 2010 through the merger of Mirant Corp. and RRI today announced it would deactivate 3,140 MW of generating capacity in PJM’s operational region between June 2012 and May 2015, citing insufficient “forecasted returns on investments necessary to comply with environmental regulations.”

In a landmark ruling that some analysts are calling a “major victory” for the hydropower sector, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court last week overturned a March 2010 decision by the Montana Supreme Court that entitled the state of Montana to collect $89 million in back rent from PPL Montana for that company’s use of state-owned riverbeds for long-standing hydropower plants.

An updated roadmap for the smart grid is now available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which recently finished reviewing and incorporating roughly 240 comments on the draft version that was released for public comment in October last year.

A severe blaze that broke out on Monday morning at RWE npower’s 750-MW Tilbury power station—a plant recently converted from coal to biomass that has been billed as a pioneer in its use of that technology—raged for two days, until Tuesday, when it was brought under control. All employees at the plant have been accounted for.

A proposed rule issued on Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not change the greenhouse gas (GHG) permitting thresholds for the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and Title V Operating Permit programs. However, it includes revisions to the permitting program that would provide some flexibility in how compliance is achieved with GHG emission caps.

The shield building of FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co.’s (FENOC’s) Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, lacked an exterior weatherproof coating, and this allowed moisture from the blizzard of January 1978 to migrate into the concrete and cause the hairline wall and subsurface cracks discovered during a reactor head replacement outage at the facility last fall, a root cause analysis report indicates.

UK power company Drax has canceled a 290-MW biomass power plant proposed for construction in North Yorkshire, citing high costs for transporting fuel to the £1.4 billion ($2.19 billion) inland plant and a lack of financial and regulatory support from the UK government.

The UK and France on Friday signed a landmark agreement to strengthen cooperation on civil nuclear energy between the two countries, reaffirming their enthusiasm for nuclear power. The agreement, made nearly a year after the Fukushima accident in Japan, seeks to help the countries achieve energy security within the European Union’s low-carbon energy policy framework.

Vermont’s attorney general on Saturday appealed a federal district court’s January decision that invalidated two Vermont statutes and ruled that Entergy could operate the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant beyond a state-mandated shutdown deadline of March 21, 2012.

Spain’s oldest nuclear reactor, Santa María de Garoña, can continue to operate safely until 2019, the country’s nuclear regulator the Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear (CSN) told the government last week. The report follows a decision last month by Spain’s recently elected conservative government to overturn a decree that would have forced the plant to close by April 2013.

Publication of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) in Thursday’s Federal Register means that the three-year compliance period mandated under the Clean Air Act will begin in 60 days, on April 16, 2012. Thursday’s publication also kicked up a storm of reactions and prompted several legal challenges.

A legal challenge to the Obama administration’s decision not to issue proposed ozone standards last fall was dismissed on Friday after a three-judge panel with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that it did not have jurisdiction to review the action.

Eleven U.S. nuclear plants received a Request for Information (RFI) from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday asking for analyses of the effects of “thermal conductivity degradation” for nuclear fuel developed by Westinghouse under certain postulated accident conditions.

Commissioners at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday voted 4–1 to direct staff to prepare a construction and operation license (COL) for Southern Co.’s two AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle, south of Augusta, which could become operational between 2016 and 2017. NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko, who cast the lone vote against the COL, cited the need for safety enhancements recommended as a result of the Fukushima accident last March for reasons of his dissent.

In a speech today to hundreds of Southern Co. employees at that company’s Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga.—the site of the first new reactors approved in the U.S. since 1978—Energy Secretary Steven Chu said federal agencies were preparing to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in the global nuclear sector by earmarking $770 million in the Fiscal Year 2013 budget.

American Electric Power (AEP) may continue operating Big Sandy Unit 2, an 800-MW coal-fired power plant in Kentucky, if state regulators approve a 31% rate increase to help pay for pollution controls. The measure would trim the company’s planned coal retirements to 5,138 MW, not 5,909 MW, as the company had announced last June.

About 93% of total coal consumed in the U.S. in 2011 was used in the electric power sector, but electric sector coal consumption dropped by an estimated 40 million short tons—or 4% compared to 2010—as generators turned to cheaper natural gas instead, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) says.