News

Adds Moniz’s March 25 comments on the future of the nation’s nuclear waste beyond Yucca Mountain. As four bipartisan U.S. senators unveiled a bill that tasks a new independent agency with permanent disposal of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday outlined steps the agency would take to […]

Numerous announcements of plant closures during the past week are painting a grim picture for the future of the coal industry. On March 20, several news outlets reported that American Electric Power (AEP) had sent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, notices to workers at half a dozen coal-fired plants. Employees at the […]

The ongoing record drought in California has caused significant changes in the state’s power mix as water available for hydroelectric generation becomes increasingly scarce, according to a recent report from Oakland-based nonprofit the Pacific Institute. The California Independent System Operator warned last year that water shortages were likely to substantially impact the state’s generation, with […]

Four Japanese utilities last week announced that they would retire five older reactors rather than implement strict and expensive safety requirements mandated by new nuclear regulations.  Kansai Electric Power Co. on March 17 said it will close two reactors (340 MW and 500 MW) at its Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture. On the same […]

Several gigawatts of solar energy faded from European grids during the two-hour solar eclipse that shadowed the continent, as well as parts of Northern Africa and Asia, on Friday morning. But according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E)—an organization representing 41 transmission system operators (TSOs) from 34 European countries—grid operators […]

The consortium behind the Nordlink high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) link between Germany and Norway on Mar. 19 awarded the construction contract for the project to Swiss firm ABB. The $2 billion, 525-kV transmission line will be, at 623 kilometers (km), the longest HVDC connection in Europe. It will transit the North Sea across the Skagerrak strait, […]

Cyberattacks on Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power’s (KHNP’s) computer systems last December were committed by a group of North Korean hackers, an interim South Korean investigation has concluded.  The Seoul central prosecutors office said in a March 16 statement that the malicious codes used for the nuclear operator hacking were “the same in composition and […]

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from the energy sector were unchanged from the preceding year—marking the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases that was not associated to an economic downturn, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.  The Paris-based autonomous organization said in a […]

The reliability support service agreement (RSSA) that would rescue the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in western New York from an early retirement has come under fire from a group of about 60 large electricity customers—industrial, institutional, and commercial entities—who on Mar. 6 asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reject the proposed deal, […]

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan will certainly be challenged in court, but states and power companies must expend enormous resources developing and complying with state plans regardless of the outcome, witnesses testified on March 17 at a House hearing on the proposal’s legal and cost issues.  The three-hour-long hearing at the House […]