Latest
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Commentary
EPA Makes the Best Case for State Regulation
A lot of attention has focused recently on federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing through the Environmental Protection Agency. But EPA’s ineptitude in air regulation makes a case for state-by-state regulation of oil and gas drilling.
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Commentary
Another Billionz Update: NOAA Discovers Inflation
Is a changing climate producing greater economic losses from weather events? Or could it be a simple matter of inflation?
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Commentary
Project Leadership for Project Management
We always talk about project management but rarely discuss project leadership. There’s a difference.
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Commentary
It Can Happen Here
When the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, the response of the Western nuclear industry was, “It can’t happen here.” And then there was Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011. Was one disaster worse than the other?
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Legal & Regulatory
TREND: Europe’s Enthusiasm for Renewables Wanes
The EU has poured billions of dollars in support of the development of wind and solar projects over the past decade. Have the Europeans now lost their appetite for all things green?
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News
NIST Releases New Smart Grid Interoperability Standards
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.
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News
Fire Ravages UK’s Flagship Coal-to-Biomass 750-MW Tilbury Station
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.
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News
EPA to Keep Thresholds in Step 3 of Tailoring Rule for GHG Permits
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.
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News
Moisture from Blizzard of `78 Caused Cracks in Davis-Besse Shield Building, FENOC Says
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.
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News
BPA to Upgrade Pacific Direct Current Intertie
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.