Latest

A day after Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) doubled estimates of the total amount of radiation released into the atmosphere after an earthquake and tsunami ravaged Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO’s) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the government nuclear watchdog released a 750-page report in which it admits, for the first time, that nuclear fuel may have possibly melted through reactor pressure vessels and accumulated at the bottom of outer containment vessels.

China has formally revoked grants to Chinese wind turbine manufacturers that agreed to use key parts and components made in China rather than purchasing imports after the U.S. filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), saying the subsidies were prohibited under international trade rules. The U.S. took action after the United Steelworkers (USW) last September filed a trade case alleging that China used “protectionist and predatory” practices to develop its renewable sector at the expense of production and job creation in the U.S.

American Electric Power (AEP) and Duke Energy on Thursday said they would jointly develop a 55-mile, extra-high-voltage transmission project with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Indiana and Kentucky.

The U.S. House Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday passed a bill that restores $35 million to the development of the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada, including $10 million that goes to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to continue its license application.

The latest recipient of a conditional commitment for a $45.6 million federal loan guarantee from the Department of Energy (DOE) is Fotowatio Renewable Venture’s 20-MW alternating current (AC) photovoltaic (PV) solar generating facility.

GenOn has reportedly reached a settlement agreement with environmental groups PennEnvironment and the Sierra Club in a case that alleges the Houston-based company continuously violated its Clean Water Act discharge permit and discharged more than three million gallons of wastewater a day from its 1,700-MW coal-fired Conemaugh Generating Station in Western Pennsylvania into the Conemaugh River.

The Department of Energy has commissioned a testing facility as part of its National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) to enable research and development of post-combustion carbon dioxide capture technologies for coal-based power plants and to speed up their deployment.

Despite California’s deep economic wounds, Governor Jerry Brown (D) last month signed a bill (SB 2X) that increased the state’s already ambitious renewables portfolio standard (RPS) goal from 20% to 33% by 2020. Together with the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires caps on greenhouse gas emissions starting next year, the new law will push up the price of electricity and further delay the Golden State’s economic recovery by permanently driving away irreplaceable businesses and manufacturing jobs.

The Russian Investigative Committee has completed a probe into the August 2009 accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydro Power Plant in Siberia that killed 75 people. The committee has charged seven people—including the plant’s former head, Nikolai Nevolko, his deputies, and the plant’s former chief engineer, Andrei Mitrofanov—for violating safety rules. If found guilty, the officials could face five years in jail.

In April, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency provisionally raised the accident rating for three reactors at the crippled six-unit Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture to Level 7—making it a “major accident” and putting it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine. Recovery efforts continue at the nuclear plant with workers […]