News

  • Improved Coal Dust Collector

    Martin Engineering has introduced an upgraded version of the MARTIN Insertable Dust Collector, which features improved filters and a smaller footprint to control airborne coal dust at belt conveyor loading points and other bulk material-handling operations. Insertable dust collectors are typically installed to reduce problems associated with central baghouse collection systems, including long runs of […]

  • TVA OIG Report: Kingston Coal Spill Caused by Bad Management Practices

    A report released on Tuesday by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) lambasts the publically owned company’s management practices. It says that the breach of a 50-year-old coal ash storage pond and subsequent ash spill at its Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tenn., last December could have been prevented if TVA had heeded 20 years of warnings and taken recommended corrective actions.

  • UK Switches on "World’s Largest" Oxyfuel CCS Pilot Plant

    Doosan Babcock Energy on Friday switched on what it is calling the “world’s largest” oxyfuel combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility in Renfrew, Scotland. The facility will demonstrate that company’s OxyCoal Clean Combustion system for the first time on a full-size 40-MW burner.

  • DOE’s Denial of Loan Guarantee Forces USEC to Demobilize Enrichment Plant

    The Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday said it had encouraged USEC to withdraw its application for $2 billion in loan guarantee funding for the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. The decision has forced the nation’s only domestic uranium enrichment firm to begin demobilizing the project.

  • Bill to Manage CCS Risk Introduced in U.S. Senate

    U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-Penn.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) last week introduced a bill to encourage the commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology by setting up a program for managing financial risk or liability of the long-term storage of the greenhouse gas.

  • Bruce Power Scraps Plans for Two New Ontario Nuke Plants

    Canada’s only private nuclear generating company, Bruce Power, plans to withdraw its application to build two new nuclear power plants in Ontario, opting instead to refurbish existing reactors. The decisions reflect the “realities of the market” and are unique to Ontario, the company said last week.

  • AWEA: U.S. Wind Energy Growth Slows Amid Economic Concerns

    New wind energy installations in the U.S. plunged to just 1,210 MW in the second quarter of 2009—falling to less than half of the 2,790 MW of new installations reported for the first quarter of this year—according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

  • TransAlta Launches Hostile Bid for Canadian Hydro as Exelon Gives Up on NRG

    TransAlta Corp. on Monday launched a hostile takeover bid of C$653.7 million (C$1.5 billion in enterprise value) for renewables giant Canadian Hydro Developers, offering shareholders C$4.55 per share in cash. The energy giant said that the move followed a seven-month failed effort to negotiate an acquisition transaction with Canadian Hydro.

  • Southern Co. and SECARB Plan Injection of Coal Plant Carbon Emissions

    Southern Co. has partnered with the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) to inject carbon dioxide captured from Alabama Power’s Plant Barry into a 9,000-feet-deep saline reservoir north of Mobile, Ala.

  • AECL to Demonstrate and Assess Thorium Use in Chinese CANDU Reactors

    Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) last week signed an agreement with three Chinese companies to develop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel and to study the commercial and technical feasibility of its full-scale application in CANDU reactors like the twin CANDU 6 that are being built in Qinshan III, southwest of Shanghai.