Fire in a civilian nuclear power plant has long been one of the safety issues that has most troubled the industry since its formative days in the 1960s and 1970s.…
Power
Monthly Issue | July 1, 2010
Nothing better illustrates the way the legislative sausage machine works in Washington than the so-called "emergency war supplemental" appropriation bill that Congress was considering at this writing. The most notable…
A recent survey finds utility regulators contradicting themselves on the touchy subject of nuclear power. They say they like new nukes, but their actions belie their stated beliefs. Utility regulators…
The Energy Department's failure to recognize an impending supply squeeze for helium-3—a nonradioactive gas produced in the agency's nuclear weapons complex—has created a national crisis requiring White House intervention and…
Two recent analyses of workforce issues—completely separate from each other—suggest an important linkage. One study, by Celerant Consulting (PDF) of Lexington, Mass., finds that an enormous amount of work time—typically…
Most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have had decades to come to terms with the intricacies of the wind industry. As they slowly ramped up from small sub-100-kW machines to the…
With some industries reeling in today's economy, future revenue growth is still uncertain in certain markets. The bright exception is the "new energy" arena of renewables and sustainables. But that's…
The recently unveiled Kerry-Lieberman global climate warming bill is an exercise in triviality. By century's end, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% will only result in global temperatures being…
Al Gore has called on the U.S. to "commit to producing 100% of electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within ten years" [sic]. But the ten-year…
A group of 14 international academics from a variety of fields, under the auspices of the London School of Economics and Politics, have produced a paper calling for a new…