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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.

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.

Steel mills have long recaptured flue gas from the blast furnace to generate local power and steam. But advances in gas turbine technology have taken what was a low-tech means of increasing plant efficiency and given mill owners ways to increase profits through selling electricity and greatly reducing emissions through more efficient combustion.

Surging supply and plummeting prices during 2011 have worked a sea change in America’s energy policies and use of natural gas. How long can it go on?

Timing is (almost) everything when it comes to building new power plants. Nobody knows that better than AEP, which finally got a happy ending to a story that took over a decade to complete.

The 2000s saw dramatic growth in gas-fired power generation capacity. But, surprise–this growth was also accompanied by the retirements of numerous older gas-fired plants.

The rapid growth of gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing has drawn increasing allegations of property damage and health risks. In many cases, these allegations are being followed by a wave of lawsuits.

Whatever your role in gas-fired power, there’s one constant these days: You probably aren’t bored.

Gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing is not new, but the controversy over it is. While the process carries some notable risks, the potential and promise of fracking argue in favor of responsible development and regulation, not an outright ban.