POWERnews

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week renewed the operating licenses for Units 1 and 2 of the 2,301-MW Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Ga., for an additional 20 years, making them the 53rd and 54th reactor licenses renewed by the federal regulatory body.

Entergy subsidiaries on Thursday announced they had completed three major transmission projects in south Louisiana, including a rebuild of a line in Plaquemines Parish that had been destroyed in Hurricane Katrina and two upgrades to transmission lines that run through the Baton Rouge to New Orleans corridor.

An administrative law judge presiding over hearings on an appeal of an air permit granted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to the $1.6 billion ultrasupercritical John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant proposed for Hempstead County, Ark., on Monday threw out arguments by environmentalists questioning whether carbon dioxide emissions from the plant were properly considered.

Babcock & Wilcox Co. (B&W) entered the race to commercialize small-nuclear reactors today, unveiling the mPower, a modular 125-MW Generation III nuclear reactor that can be scaled to produce up to 750 MW.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu laid out the Obama administration’s position on nuclear energy, nuclear waste storage, and carbon sequestration at a House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee last week.

A federation of Japanese power companies last week reportedly asked member companies to “rethink plans” to power the country’s nuclear plants with mixed oxide (MOX) fuel because many plants are unlikely to launch plutonium generation within the next three years, as expected.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on Friday appealed a January 2009 ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that declared emissions from the public company’s coal plants in eastern Tennessee and Alabama a public nuisance in North Carolina. Experts say that the landmark decision could pave the way for public nuisance suits to regain prominence in climate change–related litigation.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on Friday ordered Duke Energy to permanently shut down three units—a combined capacity of 265 MW—at the company’s Wabash River Station in Indiana within three months.

The Canadian government is restructuring the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) and may sell a stake of the company to the private sector to leverage the country’s long-term investment in nuclear energy.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act, now bound for debate on the House floor after clearing the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, contains four key changes that will secure the coal industry and thousands of jobs that coal provides, U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) said Friday.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) was the most solar-integrated utility in the U.S. last year, followed by Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, according to new rankings released last week by the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA).

Owners of unregulated power generation in the Mid-Atlantic continued to enjoy high profits in 2008, despite the economic downturn, according to a study of financial data released on Monday by the American Public Power Association (APPA).

U.S. power sales have plunged in the past six months on the back of an unprecedented demand decline that was caused by sharp contractions in the economy, and recovery is not anticipated until the 2010 to 2015 period, an analysis from Edinburgh-based Wood Mackenzie shows.

Russia’s federal atomic energy agency, Rosatom, reportedly said Tuesday that it had reached a landmark deal to supply enriched uranium fuel rods to nuclear power plants in the U.S.

A jury in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana last week ruled in favor of Duke Energy and against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on four of six projects involved in a decade-long pollution controls lawsuit affecting the company’s Midwest power plants. The jury ruled against the company on two Indiana projects.

A public-private partnership that includes the Energy Department, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and Southern Co. is planning the largest start-to-end coal-fired demonstration of MHI’s amine solvent carbon capture technology at an existing Alabama coal-fired unit by 2011.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector decreased by about 2.1% as power generation declined by 1% last year, according to preliminary estimates released last week by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The decrease reflected, among other factors, falling emissions from fossil fuel generation and an increase in wind-powered generation, the agency said.

Despite financial turmoil, the global carbon market doubled in size and grew to an estimated value of $126 billion, according to the latest State and Trends of the Carbon Market Report 2009, released today by the World Bank at Carbon Expo in Barcelona.

After a week of long and heated arguments, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Friday passed by a vote of 33 to 25 the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a massive 946-page bill that would set up a cap-and-trade program and a federal renewable energy standard.
H.R. 2454 now heads to the House Ways and Means Committee, which will review the tax and trade implications of the bill. That committee could make more revisions to the bill.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee began markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) on Monday and Tuesday this week, spending hours wrangling over the first of several hundred amendments proposed for the 946-page bill.

A federal court has determined that Salt Lake City–based EnergySolutions can import 1.600 tons of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) from Italy to its facility in Clive, Utah, ruling that its efforts fall outside the regulatory jurisdiction of the Northwest Compact, a coalition that includes Utah and seven other states.

French Prime Minister François Fillon  and AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon on Monday inaugurated the first centrifuge cascade of the €3 billion Georges Besse II uranium enrichment plant, where production is set to commence this year.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu on Friday announced at the National Coal Council that $2.4 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be used to expand and accelerate the commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

UniStar Nuclear Energy last week confirmed that its Calvert Cliffs Unit 3 nuclear energy facility was among four projects chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to enter the final phase of due diligence for a portion of $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for advanced nuclear projects. The selection positions UniStar to move forward with detailed negotiations leading to a conditional commitment under the program.

American Electric Power (AEP) and Allegheny Energy on Tuesday said they had jointly filed an application seeking authorization to build a proposed electric transmission line in West Virginia.

President Obama’s $26.4 billion Department of Energy (DOE) budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2010 substantially increases new cash for the development of renewable energies, energy efficiency, and for measures to curb carbon dioxide emissions, but it cuts funding to coal and nuclear programs—fuels that produce 70% of the nation’s electricity. The proposed FY 2010 […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) has reportedly dropped Luminant’s Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant’s expansion planned in Texas from its list of new nuclear projects being considered for the first round of federal loan guarantee. Four projects now remain on the DOE shortlist. New reactors at Southern Co.’s Vogtle plant in Georgia, Scana Corp.’s Summer […]

As IEEE celebrates its 125th anniversary on May 13, it is also addressing the challenges ahead. The Center for Energy Workforce Development estimates that 45% of engineers in electric utilities will be eligible for retirement, or may leave for other reasons, in the next five years. What’s more, the educators of new engineers are also […]

The Kansas Senate last week approved by a 37–2 vote an energy bill that will allow Sunflower Electric Power Corp. to build a long-delayed coal-fired power plant near Holcombe. The bill’s approval comes days after Kansas’ new governor, Mark Parkinson, and Sunflower Electric Power Corp. reached a compromise that would scale down the company’s plans […]

Saskatchewan and Montana officials last week said they would partner on the development of one of the largest international carbon capture and storage demonstration projects in the world. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on the construction of a “technology neutral CO2 plant at […]