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GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), a global alliance of GE and Hitachi that was formed last year, said on Monday it had notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its intent to renew design certification for its Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR).

The U.S. coal power industry saw a spate of important announcements this week.

In the past two days, numerous news outlets have reported that president-elect Barack Obama will nominate Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to become the next secretary of energy. If he is officially announced and then confirmed, Chu will become the 12th individual to lead the Department of Energy. Do you remember the 11 who preceded him, starting in 1977?

By Kennedy Maize
The Obama administration has picked Steven Chu, currently the director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be secretary of energy. The selection was quite a surprise, as Chu’s name had not surfaced in any of the rumors circulating in Washington. Indeed, he’s not well know in Washington political circles.

South Africa, reeling from a power crisis caused by a lack of generating capacity, on Friday canceled a plan to build a nuclear plant for about $12 billion, saying it was “not in a position to invest in nuclear.”

The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in Entergy v. EPA, a case that questions an appellate court decision that said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot conduct a cost-benefit analysis in regulating how power plants use cooling water from rivers and lakes. Power companies and the EPA—pitted against environmental groups led by […]

Alstom and Polish company PGE Elektrownia Belchatow S.A. on Monday announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop and implement carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at the 4,440-MW Belchatow power plant in Poland—Europe’s largest conventional power station. In the first phase of the Polish project, Alstom will design and construct a […]

Constellation Energy announced on Monday that its board of directors had authorized the company to begin talks with Électricité de France (EDF), following the French nuclear giant’s unsolicited proposal earlier last week to buy 50% of Constellation’s nuclear generation and operation business for $4.5 billion. The Baltimore company’s board had in mid-September approved an acquisition […]

American Electric Power (AEP) said last week it is evaluating the feasibility of building a multistate, extra-high-voltage transmission project—more than 1,000 miles long—across the Upper Midwest to support the development of renewable energy. The utility has proposed building the first 765-kV extra-high-voltage transmission lines (PDF) to connect major wind developments in the Dakotas and surrounding states […]

TransGas Development Systems LLC (TGDS) plans to build a coal-to-liquids plant in West Virginia, company officials announced yesterday during the West Virginia Energy Summit. The New York–based company filed a permit to build the $3 billion facility in Mingo County. Projected to be operational by 2013, the plant will be built in the region’s new […]