POWERnews

Two workers suffered minor injuries on Wednesday when a blast of oxygenated steam escaped in an auxiliary building in the Fessenheim nuclear power station in eastern France and triggered a brief fire alert.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday issued Interim Staff Guidance (ISG) to U.S. nuclear power plants to ensure adequate implementation of three orders it issued in March in response to lessons learned from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday awarded more than $5 million to 14 new research projects across 11 states that will examine the potential of methane hydrates as a future energy supply. Interest in methane hydrates, the 3-D ice-lattice structures found both onshore and offshore with natural gas locked inside, has been mounting since the U.S. and Japanese researchers were able to extract a steady flow of natural gas from methane on the North Slope of Alaska earlier this year.

A federal district court on Thursday ruled in favor of more than 800 plaintiffs when it held the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) liable for the December 2008 failure of coal ash containment dikes at its Kingston Fossil plant in Roane County, Tenn., that resulted in the spill of more than a billion gallons of coal ash sludge.

Injection of carbon dioxide began last week at one of the world’s first fully integrated coal-fired carbon capture, transportation, and geologic storage projects. The "Anthropogenic Test" conducted by the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) transports carbon dioxide via a 12-mile pipeline from a 25-MW post-combustion carbon capture facility at Southern Co.’s 2,657-MW Plant Barry in Bucks, Ala., and sequesters it within a saline Paluxy Formation at the nearby Citronelle Oil Field operated by Denbury Resources.

Exelon on Tuesday said it plans to withdraw its Early Site Permit (ESP) application for construction of a new reactor at an 11,500-acre tract of land southeast of Victoria, Texas, saying “low natural gas prices and economic and market conditions . . . have made construction of new merchant nuclear power plants in competitive markets uneconomical now and for the foreseeable future.”

The U.S. Trade Representative on Monday asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to investigate how U.S.-provided renewable energy services affect development of renewable energy projects worldwide. The ITC’s report, expected by June 28, 2013, will focus on the development, generation, and distribution of renewable energy—specifically onshore and offshore wind and solar energy.

Hurricane Isaac soaked the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi after making landfall Tuesday night with sustained winds of up to 80 mph, leaving thousands without power in five states. On Tuesday, Entergy took its Waterford 3 nuclear plant offline as a precautionary measure.

Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) has postponed restart of its troubled 478-MW Fort Calhoun nuclear plant for the third time since it was shut down 16 months ago. Restart of the reactor, located 19 miles north of Omaha, Neb., requires regulatory approval, and that is now tentatively anticipated early next year.

In a landmark ruling that has been seen as a major victory for thermal generators, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), finding that it violated federal law. The EPA must now continue implementation of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) until it can promulgate a replacement, which likely will not happen until at least 2014, industry analysts said.