POWERnews

The estimated $30 billion that electric utilities have paid since 1982 to the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund for the construction and operation of the federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain could be returned to them if a Senate bill introduced on Thursday passes.

The U.S. may never need new nuclear or coal-fired power plants because renewable energy and improved efficiency can meet future power demand, Jon Wellinghoff, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair, last week reportedly said.

After a thorough scientific review ordered in 2007 by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposed finding on Friday that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.

The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) on Tuesday approved the $4.5 billion acquisition of nearly half of Constellation Nuclear, the indirect owner of three nuclear power plants in upstate New York, to a wholly owned subsidiary of Électricité de France S.A. (EDF), the world’s largest nuclear power plant owner.

After 14 hearings and 15,000 comments, the Department of Energy has decided to pull the plug on any domestic involvement in the three-year-old Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which the U.S. initiated to focus on reprocessing spent commercial nuclear fuel.

On Thursday, while visiting Jefferson City, Mo., with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Vice President Joe Biden announced that, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more than $3.3 billion in smart grid technology development grants and an additional $615 million for smart grid storage, monitoring, and technology viability were being made available.

On tax day, Dominion and BP Wind Energy announced full commercial operation of Phase I of the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm in Benton County, Ind. Of the 400-MW facility, BP and Dominion are partners on approximately 300 MW. The two companies could expand the facility to a total of 750 MW in the future.

In recognition that downed power lines can cause catastrophic wildfires when winds and temperatures are high, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has proposed to shut off power to a mountainous backcountry area in northeastern San Diego County when conditions warrant the emergency measure. If the proposal is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), it would be the first such attempt to prevent fires by shutting off power to an at-risk area.

Officials of Tri-State Generation and Transmission still don’t know what caused symptoms that sent a total of 19 contract workers to the hospital on Friday night. Those affected were among 600 workers who are engaged in a six-week outage to upgrade boiler, turbine-generator, and scrubber systems of northwest Colorado’s Craig Station Unit 3.

An op-ed by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis titled “Building the American Clean Energy Economy” ran in six city papers yesterday and today. Selected excerpts follow.

A memorandum of understanding last week signed by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chair Jon Wellinghoff clarifies jurisdictional responsibilities and establishes a process through which the two federal agencies will lease, license, and regulate all renewable energy development activities on the Outer Continental Shelf.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week approved a 20-year license extension for Exelon Corp.’s Oyster Creek Generating Station in Ocean Country, N.J.—the nation’s oldest operating nuclear power reactor.

Southern Co. has notified the Shaw Group and Westinghouse Electric Co. to proceed fully on their engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors planned for an expansion of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Augusta, Ga.—one of the first new U.S. nuclear construction projects in more than three decades.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has contracted the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to help it develop an interim road map to harmonize interoperability standards for the smart grid.

Wind power projects installed through the end of 2008 now generate 1.25% of the nation’s electricity, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) annual wind industry report shows. Texas again installed the most capacity, but Iowa surged into second place, beating California—the state where almost all wind power capacity in the U.S. was once installed.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday approved transmission infrastructure investment rate incentives for the Green Power Express, a proposed 3,000-mile transmission superhighway designed to deliver wind-powered renewable energy from the upper Midwest to Midwestern and Eastern states.

Experts assert that the U.S. grid—already proven by federal agencies to be vulnerable to cyber attacks—has been compromised by spies who tried to map the system and left bugs that could be used to disrupt networks at a time of war or crisis.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with power companies in a landmark decision last week, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not prohibited from considering a cost-benefit analysis when regulating the design of cooling water intake structures. This ruling affects power plants use cooling water from the nation’s rivers, lakes, and oceans.

A $2.1 billion project to build a 190-mile high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line across New York State has been suspended because rules pertaining to transmission tariffs recently made by the regional grid operator had created an “unacceptable financial risk,” the New York Regional Interconnect Inc. (NYRI) said Friday.

Finland’s government has proposed to enact a tax on nuclear and hydro power plants that were built before adoption of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to cut “windfall profits” that have resulted from the EU’s carbon emission trading program.

Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in the U.S. dropped 3.1% in 2008—a departure from the steadily increasing trend in preceding years, according to a new document from Environment Integrity Project (EIP), a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization.

The Maryland Senate last week approved a bill that reverses a failed 1999 energy deregulation policy and gives state regulators the authority to order utilities to build new power plants in the state. The future of the bill is unclear, however—the state’s annual 90-day legislative session is scheduled to end on April 13.

Drilling nears completion for the first large-scale carbon dioxide (CO₂) injection well in the U.S. for CO₂ sequestration, the Department of Energy (DOE) reported Tuesday. This project will be used to demonstrate that CO₂ emitted from industrial sources—such as coal-fired power plants—can be stored in deep geological formations to mitigate the release of large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a 648-page discussion draft of the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” a bill touted as a “comprehensive approach to America’s energy policy” because it seeks to establish, among other things, a carbon emissions reduction goal, a cap-and-trade program, and a federal renewable energy standard.

Two months after Exelon Nuclear dropped GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Economic & Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) design as its preferred technology for a proposed two-unit nuclear facility in Victoria County, Texas, the company has reached agreement with GE-Hitachi for two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs) for that site.

According to the newest Annual Energy Outlook report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. will add between 184 GW and 350 GW of new capacity by 2030, depending on economic growth. Coal will continue to provide the largest share of energy for the U.S. in 2030, but natural gas–fired plants will account for more than half of all capacity additions, followed by renewables at 22%, 18% for coal, and 5% for nuclear.

The Canadian government last week said it would inject up to C$140 million (US$111 million) into eight private sector projects that have proposed to research, develop, and demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

As European utilities vie in an auction for the pubic land on which the UK’s new fleet of nuclear power plants will be built, the UK government on Monday announced it would sell the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s commercial arm, an entity that provides nuclear decommissioning, waste management, and new nuclear build support services.

A month after Energy Secretary Steven Chu pledged to accelerate approval of long-awaited federal loan guarantees under Title XVII of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Department of Energy (DOE) has conditionally approved a $535 million loan for Solyndra Inc., a manufacturer of cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels.

Despite economic concerns, the U.S. solar industry saw a third straight year of record growth in 2008. The installation of 1,265 MW of all types of solar power last year brought total U.S. solar power capacity to 8,775 MW, an annual report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) shows.