Global Monitor
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Business
THE BIG PICTURE: Subsidy Tug-of-War
Government decisions to subsidize renewable power to increase its capacity for environmental and security reasons have spurred investments but also increased cross-border tensions. Increasingly, legal actions that seek to settle international trade disputes allege unfair subsidization.
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Hydro
Brazil Drought Threatens Power Supplies
A pervasive drought in northeast Brazil has dried up power supplies from the region’s hydropower facilities, making the area prone to blackouts and crippling economic growth in one of the country’s emerging agricultural havens.
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Business
POWER Digest (March 2013)
Selected business news and deals in the power generation industry.
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Coal
Nations Agree to Legally Binding Instrument to Curb World’s Mercury Emissions
Mercury emissions from power plants in 137 United Nations member countries could be subject to strict controls and reductions if an international treaty is signed by participating nations this October.
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Coal
Despite Pollution-Curbing Efforts, Dense Smog Covers Wide Swath of China
Four bouts of dense smog described as the worst air pollution in recent memory enveloped more than half of China in January, from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei triangle in the north of the country to Nanjing in the south, via the central city of Wuhan.
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Nuclear
Hungary Inaugurates Subsurface Repository for Nuclear Plant Waste
Construction of a $310 million repository about 250 meters below Earth’s surface for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from the operation and future decommissioning of Hungary’s power plants reached a significant milestone at Bataapati.
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Gas
THE BIG PICTURE: Stretching the Pipeline
Here are some of the longest pipelines recently built as well as noteworthy ones in the pipeline.
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Gas
Japan Banks on LNG
Japan’s scramble to replace generation lost from nuclear power plants that were shuttered after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident has forced it to rely on pricey imports of fossil fuels—and soaring energy costs are hammering the world’s third-largest economy.
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Nuclear
THE BIG PICTURE: Nuclear I&C
Progress in electronics and information technology has created incentives to replace traditional analog instrumentation and control (I&C) systems in nuclear power plants with digital I&C systems, or systems based on computers and microprocessors. About 40% of the world’s operating reactors have been modernized to include at least some digital I&C systems, according to the International […]
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Coal
First U.S. Ultrasupercritical Power Plant in Operation
The U.S. saw the historic start of operations at its first ultrasupercritical coal-fired power plant last December as Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO’s) 600-MW John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant switched on in Arkansas.