POWERnews

Czech utility ÄŒEZ on Wednesday told AREVA that a bid submitted to build two new EPR units at the Temelín Nuclear Power Plant—a site that already houses two VVER-1000 reactors built in 2000 and 2003—has been disqualified because it failed to fulfill “some other crucial criteria” defined in the tender. The decision, which AREVA said it would appeal, means only Westinghouse and an AtomStroyExport-led consortium remain as contenders for that project contract.

Global nuclear power capacity is expected to grow nearly 25% from current levels to 456 GW by 2030 according to low projections, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano told conference attendees in Kyoto, Japan, on Monday. The Fukushima Daiichi accident was a "big wake-up call" on nuclear safety, but it would not mean "the end of nuclear power," he said as he called on Japan to engage in dialogue about its stated policy to shut down all existing reactors by 2040.

Southern California Edison (SCE) last week outlined measures it had completed to correct issues identified in the steam generator tubes of its beleaguered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) Units 2 and 3, as requested by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). As part of a restart plan also submitted to regulators last week, the company proposed to restart Unit 2 at 70% power for a five-month trial period.

PPL Corp. on Friday said it was preparing to shut down Unit 1 of its two-reactor Susquehanna Nuclear Plant in northeastern Pennsylvania for additional turbine inspection and to confirm data provided by new instrumentation that could finalize a plan to resolve turbine blade cracking that has afflicted both reactors at the plant.

An update to a 2010 analysis on the market and regulatory outlook facing coal-fired power plants in the U.S. from economists at The Brattle Group forsees that 59 GW to 77 GW of coal plant capacity are likely to retire over the next five years—about 25 GW more than previously estimated—due primarily to lower expected natural gas prices.

Repair of the damaged containment structure at Progress Energy’s Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida will likely hover at $1.5 billion, but it could escalate to as much as $3.5 billion and take eight years to complete in the worst-case scenario, an independent review of a potential repair plan shows.

A bill introduced on Friday by a ranking member of the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee seeks to reform the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Science Advisory Board (SAB) and its sub-panels to deal with concerns about “balance, impartiality, independence, and public participation.”

A settlement proposed by New Mexico’s Environment Department on Wednesday calls for retiring two units at the 1,800-MW San Juan Generating Station located 15 miles west of Farmington, N.M., by December 2017 and installing selective noncatalytic reduction, a less-costly air emissions control technology than one proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on the other two units, 3 and 4. Plant owner PNM Resources  said in statement that it was hopeful the state’s proposal would resolve a long-standing dispute with the EPA to address regional haze.

On Oct. 1, GenOn shuttered its 482-MW coal-fired Potomac River Generating Station as Progress Energy Carolinas retired three coal-fired units—two at the 316-MW Cape Fear plant near Moncure, N.C., and the 177-MW H.B. Robinson Unit 1 near Hartsville, S.C. Utah’s Rocky Mountain Power, a unit of PacifiCorp, meanwhile reportedly warned employees and public officials that it may close its 190-MW coal-fired Carbon Power Plant in northeastern Utah over the next few years because it has no room to install air emissions controls to make it compliant with federal rules by 2015.

The National Park Service on Monday approved a $1.2 billion 500-kV transmission line that will run from the Berwick area in Pennsylvania to Roseland, N.J., a project that developers Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G) and PPL Electric Utilities say will boost electric service reliability and provide a significant economic stimulus to the region.

Low natural gas prices and still-soft electricity demand are forcing low-load and cycling operations at traditionally baseloaded coal units across the country. The resulting challenges were top of mind at the Electric Utility Cost Group’s (EUCG’s) fall meeting in Denver last week. One member of the EUCG’s fossil generation committee from an Ohio Valley utility said that cycling and low-load operations pose challenges for one of his company’s 1,300-MW coal-fired plants that “two years ago we wouldn’t have considered possible.”

Florida Power & Light (FPL) on Monday got the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) approval to increase power¬¬¬ output of St. Lucie Unit 2 by 17%, from 853 MWe to 1,002 MWe. The regulator had in July approved a similar uprate for St. Lucie Unit 1, and its decision on Monday means FPL can fully proceed with its $3 billion plan to boost nuclear output and save on future fossil fuel costs.

An inspection has shown that loss of offsite power at the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., in January had substantial safety significance and will result in additional inspections and regulatory oversight, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on Friday.

Exelon’s 852-MW Three Mile Island Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pa., on Thursday automatically tripped owing to a flux to flow imbalance of the "C" reactor coolant pump, a filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) shows.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last week approved a deal involving the state’s major utilities and renewable energy advocates that is  aimed at streamlining the process for connecting distributed generation (DG) resources to the grid. The CPUC’s action will make it easier for small amounts of distributed resources—such as rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems—to connect to the grid. The agreement also revises upward the amount of DG that can be connected to a specific power line segment without the need for supplemental studies.

A license issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Tuesday greenlights operation of a proposed plant that will use laser technology to enrich uranium for fuel in commercial nuclear power reactors. If built as proposed on a 1,600-acre site at General Electric–Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment’s (GLE’s) global headquarters in Wilmington, N.C., where GLE currently operates a fuel fabrication plant, the facility would be one of two new enrichment plants expected to be operational by 2020, even though several others have received NRC approval and federal government funding.

In its last legislative act before the November election, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed by a vote of 233 to 175 the controversial "Stop the War on Coal Act," a legislative package of measures that seeks to bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from promulgating carbon emission rules, calls for an analysis of the cumulative economic impacts of certain environmental rules, and would create a state-based program to regulate coal ash.

A bill introduced by U.S. Reps. John Tierney and Ed Markey on Wednesday could prevent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from granting operating license renewals to reactor owners that apply more than 10 years before a current facility license expires.

Cyber attacks on the utility industry are no longer theoretical. According to multiple sources, smart grid technology vendor Telvent told U.S., Canadian, and Spanish customers on Sept. 10 that hackers had broken through its firewall and accessed “project files” related to its OASyS SCADA system. On Wednesday, reports surfaced that, based on the perpetrators’ “digital fingerprints,” the attack appears to be the work of a well-known Chinese hacker group.

About 1,792 MW of existing generation in the New York bulk power system is expected to retire or be mothballed over the next decade, and if demand heightens as has been forecast by 2020, the state’s grid could see a 1,000-MW generation gap, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) warned in its recently released 2012 Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA).

PPL Montana plans to mothball its 154-MW coal-fired J.E. Corette power plant in Billings, Mont., starting in April 2015. The company cited "effects of pending Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] regulations combined with economic factors," as reasons for its decision.

Progress Energy last week shuttered its 382-MW coal-fired H.F. Lee power plant near Goldsboro, N.C. The 1951-built station is the second to be retired under the Duke Energy subsidiary’s fleet modernization program.

RWE npower, the German energy company’s UK arm, on Tuesday said it would shutter its coal-fired 2,000-MW Didcot A Power Station in Oxfordshire and the 1,000-MW oil-fired Fawley Power Station in Hampshire at the end of March 2013 under the European Union’s (EU’s) Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD).

Japan’s Cabinet on Wednesday refrained from endorsing a much-awaited, controversial recommendation made just days before by an advisory panel urging Japan to seek to close all its viable nuclear reactors by 2040 and increase its reliance on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and fossil fuels.

Spent nuclear fuel stored onsite at commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S. will increase by about 2,000 metric tons per year and balloon to more than 140,000 metric tons by 2055, before it can be moved offsite when storage or disposal facilities are expected to have been developed, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a recently released report.

More than 300 state and national public interest groups on Friday asked U.S. senators to oppose a bill introduced in August by Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D- Mont.) that they say will fail to protect public health and the environment because it encourages "unsafe dumping of toxic coal ash."

One of the best ways California would be able to endure another summer without power from Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station would be to convert the Huntington Beach Units 3 and 4 into synchronous condensers, allowing them to act somewhat like spinning flywheels to adjust grid conditions, experts from the California Independent System Operator Corp. (CAISO) told its Board of Governors at a meeting last week.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has agreed to pay $6.4 million to the U.S. Forest Service to settle claims related to one of the largest wildfires in California history. The utility has already paid more than $1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits after state investigations concluded that the company’s high-voltage power lines produced electrical arcing and ignited the 2007 Witch Creek Fire that ravaged 198,000 acres near Santa Ysabel in San Diego County, Calif.

The title of world’s largest operating solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant goes to Arizona. On Monday, First Solar Inc. announced that the Agua Caliente solar project has achieved a peak generating capacity of 250 MW connected to the electrical grid. The project, under construction in Yuma County, will have a total capacity of 290 MW when completed.

In testimony before a congressional subcommittee, Joseph McClelland, director of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Office of Electric Reliability, enumerated the ways in which the U.S. regulatory system is ill-equipped to deal with time-sensitive threats to physical and cyber assets of its power system.