Latest
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Coal
CBO: Carbon Tax Could Be Costly to Economy but Generate Trillions, Avert Climate Change Effects
A carbon tax or cap-and-trade programs could raise trillions of dollars within the first 10 years of their enactment and avert climate change effects, but without accounting for how these revenues will be used, they could take a toll on the U.S. economy, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says in a report released on Tuesday.
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Instrumentation & Controls
House Holds Cyber Threat Hearing as NIST Begins Preliminary Work on Cybersecurity Framework
Panelists at a House hearing on Tuesday held to examine steps the federal government and private sector are taking to bolster the nation’s critical infrastructure security shed light on the extent and variety of possible cyberattacks and called for flexible solutions. The hearing was held days after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its initial analysis of hundreds of comments submitted in response to President Obama’s February 2013 cybersecurity executive order.
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Gas
NERC Calls for Gas Availability to Be Incorporated into Reliability Assessments
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), in a special reliability assessment released on Wednesday, called for a number of changes to address the increased reliance on natural gas for power generation, among them incorporating gas availability and gas supply issues into electric reliability assessments.
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Solar
Sempra Dedicates First Phase of Mesquite Solar Complex in Ariz.
Sempra U.S. Gas & Power dedicated the first 150-MW phase of the 4,000-acre Mesquite Solar facility in Maricopa County, Ariz., on Friday. Potential to build out up to 700 MW of nameplate capacity could make the photovoltaic (PV) complex one of the biggest in the U.S.
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Environmental
EIA Releases State-by-State Report on Energy-Related CO2 Emissions
In a report released on Monday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) presents data on energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for each state by year, fuel, sector, and other breakouts for the years 2000 through 2010.
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Nuclear
ASLB Bars San Onofre Unit 2 Restart Without Public Hearing
A three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) on Tuesday ruled that Southern California Edison (SCE) cannot restart Unit 2 of its shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) until the NRC holds a formal license amendment proceeding with full public participation.
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Nuclear
Westinghouse, China’s SNPTC Partner to Develop Global AP1000 Supply Chain
Westinghouse and China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC) have teamed to further develop a supply chain within China for power plant equipment and components to be used in global AP1000 nuclear power plants.
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Instrumentation & Controls
Newly Developed Software Isolates Cyber Attacks on Networked Control Systems
A software algorithm developed by researchers from North Carolina State University promises to detect and isolate cyber attacks on networked control systems.
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Environmental
Power Plant Global Warming Suit Dismissed by Federal Court
A three-judge panel at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit that alleges carbon dioxide emissions by several power companies contributed to global warming that intensified Hurricane Katrina.
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Nuclear
“No Merit” in Challenges to NRC Approvals of AP1000, Vogtle 3 & 4, D.C. Circuit Rules
In an apparent legal victory for developers of new nuclear power plants in the U.S., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied complaints from environmental groups that federal approval of Southern Co.’s two new reactors under construction in Georgia did not address lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.