Latest

  • German 1.1-GW Staudinger Coal Plant Gets Green Light

    The German state governing council of Hesse last week partially approved a 1.1-GW coal-fired power plant proposed for construction by Germany firm E.ON at its Staudinger site. If E.ON receives clearance for actual operation of the plant, the plant will be the sixth block at the site, replacing three older units built in the 1960s and 1970s.

  • Project Demonstrates Removal of Water from Ultrafine Coal Waste

    A novel technology that could help release some currently unusable energy in an estimated 2 billion tons of coal waste in the U.S. has been demonstrated by a Department of Energy–supported project, the federal body said on Tuesday.

  • NRC Publishes Savannah River MOX Facility Safety Evaluation Report

    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week said it had published its final Safety Evaluation Report (SER) for the Mixed-Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at Savannah River.

  • FERC Approves Constellation’s $1.1B Acquisition of BostonGen Plants

    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month approved Constellation Energy’s $1.1 billion acquisition of BostonGen’s five power plants in the Boston area, which have a combined capacity of 2,950 MW. The approval marks closing of the sale of the third-largest generating portfolio in the New England region.

  • TREND: Hydro on the Rise

    Although it doesn’t get much attention, the world’s first and largest source of renewable electricity, water power, is still a major player on the world stage. Though viewed as politically incorrect by some folks, mostly in the developed world, and despite its well-known environmental impacts, using water to turn turbines to generate electricity represents an attractive way to generate electricity with no fuel costs, even in the U.S. Here’s what’s being talked about in the U.S., India, Turkey, Nigeria, and China.

  • Outsource Management?

    Whatever happened to the venerable military institution of KP? It’s been outsourced, along with a lot of other tasks in the work environment. Outsourcing often makes sense, but it isn’t a panacea.

  • Postmortem: U.S. Electric Transmission Siting Policy

    Despite high-powered congressional legislation in 2005, the U.S. is still unable to site high-voltage interstate transmission lines in a timely fashion. Two new reports suggest ways out of the gridlock.

  • MIT: Uranium Supplies Adequate

    Uranium remains plentiful around the world, says a new resource study from MIT, obviating the need to "close" the nuclear fuel cycle by reprocessing and developing breeder reactors.

  • Look Before You Leap into the Cloud

    Given cloud computing’s potential to lower operating costs and increase flexibility, it’s no wonder that it is on the cusp of sending the corporate world into a paradigm shift.

  • The Pitfalls of Pollution Allowance Trading

    The process of banking allowances under the existing schemes for creating markets for pollution reductions has created a set of difficult problems as those programs have changed, wiping out significant value from the allowances.