Latest

  • The Beguiling Promise of the HTGR

    It’s easy to see why technologists fall in love with high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). These nuclear machines are remarkable inventions, at least on paper. But few have actually seen the real world for any length of time, and their real-world experience has been mixed.

  • Wind Resources Face Market and Policy Headwinds

    Natural gas prices and low wholesale electricity prices are creating headwinds for large-scale renewable projects such as wind.

  • Fighting Transformer Fires

    Transformer fires are fearsome events, perhaps the most dangerous common threats to human life—both onsite and beyond the boundaries of a power plant—that can hit an electric utility.

  • Too Dumb to Meter, Epilogue

    As the book title Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Fiascoes, Dead Ends, and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy implies, nuclear power has traveled a rough road. For the conclusion of POWER’s exclusive serialization of the book, we offer the “Epilogue: Some Dumb Ideas Never Die.” The first 12 installments are available in the POWER online archives.

  • New Products (July 2013)

    Robotic Torches for Single Arc, Tandem Applications ESAB Welding & Cutting Products launched the new Aristo RT line of robotic torches, designed for single arc or tandem applications. The Aristo RT range of robotic torches work with three different product setups: Standard (external cable), Hollow Wrist Helix (rotation +/–220o), and Hollow Wrist Infiniturn (endless rotation). […]

  • Bridging the Gap Between Company and Community

    In communities all across North America, environmental justice (EJ), which calls for the fair treatment of all people, including those of color and the economically deprived, remains a serious concern.

  • Obama: Climate Strategy to Be Driven by Natural Gas, Renewables

    President Barack Obama’s landmark speech on Tuesday outlining executive actions to combat and prepare for climate change backed the growth of natural gas and renewable power in lieu of carbon-heavy coal power, but he mentioned nuclear power only once—and only in the context of energy security.

  • Reactions to Obama’s Climate Action Plan Swift and Varied

    Amid the deluge of reactions to President Obama’s June 25 speech announcing wide-ranging executive actions to curb carbon emissions and prepare for climate change effects were some unexpected statements.

  • NRC’s Update to Indian Point EIS Says Aquatic Impacts Are “Small”

    An update to the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Tuesday finds that possible impacts on aquatic life from the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York still do not bar it from receiving a license renewal.

  • IEA: Renewable Generation Could Surpass Global Natural Gas Share, Double Nuclear by 2016

    Driven by the booming growth of generation from hydro, wind, and solar photovoltaics (PV), generation from renewables on a terawatt-hour basis is set to surpass that from natural gas and double nuclear’s share by 2016, becoming the world’s second-most important global electricity source after coal, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).