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The U.S. Navy in late October saw the completion of its largest solar generation system, a 13.78-MW (DC) solar photovoltaic (PV) power system at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake (NAWS China Lake) in California.

Georgia Power Completes 2,500-MW Coal-to-Gas Conversion. Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power on Oct. 28 put online the third and final 840-MW natural gas combined cycle unit at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna, Ga. The first gas plant went online in December 2011 and the second on April 26. Bringing the plant’s capacity to 2,500 MW, the […]

Note on the Oconee Top Plant Some of our readers may have been confused by the wording of a press release about our November issue’s nuclear Top Plants, the table of contents blurb about Duke’s Oconee plant, or a sentence in the cover story about that plant. In the interest of brevity, it seems we […]

The 12th ICS Cyber Security Conference was held at Old Dominion University’s Virginia Modeling Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) October 22–25, 2012. There were approximately 150 attendees from multiple industries, universities, government, and vendors as well as consultants from the U.S., South America, Europe, and Asia.

Fauske & Associates LLC (FAI) recently patented a specialized pipe clamp to seat vibration-sensing equipment. A beam attached to the clamp protrudes through the pipe insulation. The beam is partially hollow and vented to promote cooling so that accelerometers can be installed on the tip of the beam outside the high-temperature and/or radiation area for […]

It has been a decade since an R0 compressor blade was liberated on one of the eight Frame 9FA combustion turbines at CLP Power Hong Kong’s Black Point Power Station. This catastrophic failure eventually led to GE’s recommendation that operators severely limit or cease using online water wash (OLWW), inlet fogging, wet compression, and evaporative coolers on F-Class turbines.

The new portable, nonmetallic Flex-I-Liner rotary peristaltic pump from Vanton Pump and Equipment Corp. evacuates drums and totes containing acids, caustics, salts, chlorides, and reagent grade chemicals, without corrosion of the pump or contamination of the fluid. The self-priming design has no seals to leak or valves to clog and can run dry for extended […]

No other country has been as frequently cited as an example of exploiting the virtues of a nuclear-heavy energy policy as France. Deriving more than 75% of its electricity from 58 operational nuclear reactors with a total capacity of about 63 GW, France has one of the lowest costs of generation and is the world’s largest net exporter of power, earning €3 billion ($3.9 billion) a year from sales of surplus power to buyers beyond its borders. But that is all about to change.

The bill for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government’s knee-jerk decision to close all 17 of its nuclear plants by 2022 is coming due. Merkel’s energy plan is to radically expand the use of renewable energy to 35% of total power consumption by 2020 and to 80% by 2050. Currently, renewables represent 20% of the country’s energy mix.

The back-to-back collapse at the end of July of India’s Northern, Eastern, and Northeastern grids that slashed power to more than 60% of India’s population of 1.24 billion has impelled the country into a spending frenzy to upgrade its rickety power network, which, a government inquiry revealed, was one cause of the unprecedented blackouts.