POWERnews

Two Republican lawmakers are probing whether the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) disregarded safety concerns and approved the Cape Wind project—the nation’s first offshore wind project—for political reasons.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday announced nearly $13 million in nuclear energy innovation awards. The awards include $10.9 million to 13 projects to solve common challenges, including improving reactor safety, performance and cost competitiveness and $1.6 million in three university-led education projects.

Owners of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Kansas are entitled to $12.6 million in damages stemming from the federal government’s partial breach of a contract for disposal of spent nuclear fuel, $2 million more than previously awarded, a federal court ruled last week.

Dr. Allison Macfarlane, an expert on nuclear waste issues and a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, was on Monday sworn in as the 15th person chosen to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). She will serve a term ending June 30, 2013.

About 700 nuclear engineers on Monday joined 144 others in a strike that has lasted more than a month, after failing to reach a labor pact with Candu Energy, a subsidiary of Canada’s SNC-Lavalin Group.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday passed H.R. 5892, the Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act, by a vote of 372–0. The bipartisan bill—championed by Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.)—seeks to facilitate the development of small hydropower and conduit projects and direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to study the feasibility of a streamlined two-year permitting process. The legislation now moves to the Senate.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week promulgated a final rule that does not revise the greenhouse gas (GHG) permitting thresholds that were established in Step 1 and Step 2 of the GHG Tailoring Rule. The final rule, which comes just days after a federal appeals court ruled the EPA was “unambiguously correct” in its interpretation of the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, is the third step of the agency’s phased-in approach to GHG permitting under the Clean Air Act.

Utilities in the Canadian province of Alberta were on Monday forced to institute rolling blackouts as soaring summer temperatures drove demand for electricity to an all-time high and six generators–four coal plants and two natural gas plants–entered unplanned outages.

Mississippi Power on Monday asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to review the June 22 unanimous denial by three commissioners of the Mississippi Public Service Commission (MPSC) of the company’s request to recover financing costs for its 582-MW Kemper County Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant.

Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO)—operator of the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear power plant under construction in Finland, a project that could be the world’s first EPR reactor but that has faced costly delays—must release €125 million ($155 million) of withheld payments to an AREVA-Siemens consortium, an international arbitration court ordered last week.

Ontario’s provincial government has persuaded the owner of an unpopular 280-MW natural gas-fired power plant that was already under construction in the City of Mississauga to relocate the project to an existing power plant site in southwestern Ontario. The agreement settles legal challenges to the government’s proposals to cancel the project.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was "unambiguously correct" in its interpretation of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The federal agency’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gases (GHG), including carbon dioxide, are a threat to public health and welfare, and its decision to set limits for industrial and automotive emissions of GHGs, was "neither arbitrary nor capricious," the court ruled. The court, however, found that it lacked jurisdiction to review the timing and scope of the GHG rules that affect larger stationary sources, including new coal-fired power plants.

The State of Vermont "repeatedly failed" to present to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) objections that Entergy Corp., owner of the controversial Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, lacked a necessary state water permit before the commission granted the reactor a 20-year operating license extension, a federal court ruled on Tuesday as it threw out the state’s legal challenge against the NRC.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers properly followed permitting procedures when it verified that Puget Sound Energy (PSE) could lower a dam in the single narrow channel above Washington State’s landmark Snoqualmie Falls to mitigate flooding issues upstream, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Tuesday.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finalized a key rule that intends to facilitate the integration of variable energy resources (VERs) and proposed another that clarifies the reporting of transactions involving energy storage facilities. The body also announced in the past week that it would soon eliminate the current system used by public utilities to report required electricity data on a quarterly basis, as well as approve the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC’s) revisions to the definition of the bulk electric system.

International pushback against China’s export restraints on rare earth elements, tungsten, and molybdenum intensified on Wednesday as the U.S., the European Union (EU), and Japan asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to establish a dispute settlement panel to vet the matter.

A federal court on Friday granted a request by Oklahoma for a stay of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) final rule requiring the reduction of sulfur dioxide emissions at four electric generating units in the state pending a review of the rule.

Owners of the 1962-built B.L. England Generating Station in New Jersey’s Cape May County will shutter the plant’s 113-MW coal-fired Unit 1 by 2013 and convert two other units to natural gas under the terms of an administrative consent order with New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The order fits in with New Jersey’s energy plan, which envisions a gradual phase-out of coal power.

FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co.’s (FENOC’s) conclusion that cracks in the shield building at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, were caused by environmental factors resulting from a blizzard in 1978 and aspects of the shield building’s design is sound, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on Thursday.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied review of a case in which several states and citizen groups contend that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) Order 697—issued in 2007 to improve market-based rate regulations—exceeds FERC’s authority under the Federal Power Act (FPA).

In an effort to slash its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) last week said it would terminate a contract to buy power from a units of NV Energy’s Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant in Nevada and instead rely on power from Northern California Power Agency’s (NCPA) 255-MW Lodi combined cycle natural gas-fired plant, which is under construction.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) on Monday completed and put into service its 500-kV Sunrise Powerlink, a $1.9 billion transmission line linking San Diego to the renewables-rich Imperial Valley.

In response to a court order, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed updates on Friday to its national air quality standards for harmful fine particle pollution, including soot (known as PM2.5). The agency says that 99% of U.S. counties are projected to meet proposed standards without any additional actions.

The United States is in a "fierce race" to compete in global solar energy markets, and its success depends on innovation and deploying solar energy at scale, said Steven Chu, secretary of the Department of Energy. He spoke at the SunShot Grand Challenge summit and technology forum in Denver last week. Chu called on the solar industry to drive down costs to enable the technology to compete against natural gas at a price of around $4 per million Btu.

Unexpected steam generator tube wear that prompted the indefinite shutdown of Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in January was caused by excessive tube vibration, company executives confirmed at a community meeting on Monday. Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) meanwhile pinned the tube failures on a flawed computer model used to design the steam generator components.

Though many have touted the vast promise of ocean energy, it has been slow to reach commercial scale, especially in North America. Today, offshore generating technologies are less of an impediment to commercial project fruition than permitting, financing, and transmission challenges, but small changes are beginning to brighten the outlook for the newest power industry sector.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday narrowly rejected a measure that would have overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), voting 46 to 53 to defeat the resolution introduced by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday conditionally approved the enhanced resource adequacy proposal submitted by the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO), which it says will provide even greater market and reliability benefits to MISO’s members and the customers they serve. The enhanced mechanisms become effective October 1, 2012, for the Planning Year that begins on June 1, 2013.

A host of new technologies are ready to transform the energy system, offering the potential to drastically reduce carbon emissions, enhance energy security, and generate a huge investment return, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new energy technology publication launched on Monday.

In a long-running labor dispute, Entergy Corp. on June 7 locked out union workers at its Pilgrim nuclear plant 38 miles southeast of Boston near Plymouth, Mass., bringing in workers from its other plants and contract workers to operate the 685-MW unit along with management officials.