Russia

A wide-ranging bill introduced by a large group of bipartisan U.S. senators on March 27 seeks to cement the role advanced nuclear reactors will play in the nation’s future power mix.  The “Nuclear Energy Leadership Act” (NELA), aims to “reestablish U.S. leadership in nuclear energy,” which has been lost to state-sponsored development in Russia and […]

Moscow, Russia. RusHydro announces commissioning of the third hydropower unit at Ust-Srednekanskaya hydropower plant, the country’s largest hydropower plant currently under construction located on the Kolyma River in the Magadan region of the Far Eastern Federal District. The plant’s installed capacity increased almost two fold – from 168 MW to 310.5 MW. Nikolay Shulginov, Chairman […]

Rosenergoatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear plant owner and operator, said it set another nuclear power production record in 2018. The company generated 204 TWh from its 35 reactors—1.4 TWh more than in

Fast neutron reactor systems have the potential to extract 60 times more energy from uranium compared to existing thermal reactors, and they contribute to a significant reduction in the burden of radioactive

In 2017, the 10 largest power companies, ranked by their installed generation capacity, owned 18% of total global installed capacity, while the next-largest 15 owned around 10%—meaning that the top 25 companies own nearly 30% of global installed power generation capacity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Chinese companies account for more than one-eighth of global installed […]

China continues to finance new coal plants in more than two dozen countries, even as the country has taken the lead in global renewable energy investment, according to a report from a U.S. group of energy analysts. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) in its report said China is backing more than […]

Another nuclear power project has been delayed, as the Fennovoima consortium and Russia’s state-run nuclear company Rosatom said the Hanhikivi 1 power plant’s projected start-up date has been pushed to 2028, four years behind the original schedule and eight years later than the proposed start when Finland’s government supported the project in 2010. The announcement […]

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) has secured a second order in Russia from Enel Russia, one of the country’s independent power producers (IPP), for the supply of 201 MW of wind turbines. The scope of the agreement includes supply, installation and commissioning of 57 Siemens Gamesa 3.X platform turbines at the Kola wind farm, located […]

Kazakhstan Electricity and Power Market Operator (JSC “KOREM”) summed up the results of the final auction for the construction of renewable energy power plants. According to the results, Hevel Group was awarded a 15-year PPA for the sale of power from a 70-MW solar plant in southern Kazakhstan. Commissioning is planned for 2019-2020. “This tender […]

Siemens Gamesa has secured its first order in Russia from Enel Russia, one of the country’s independent power producers (IPP), for the supply of 90 MW of wind turbines. This is the first order for Siemens Gamesa in the country and belongs to the preliminary agreement signed with Enel in 2017 for the supply of […]

Scorching temperatures during the summer of 2018 forced a swathe of power plants across the world to reduce power or shut down temporarily, owing to warmer-than-usual temperatures of cooling water and other

Israel Embarks on a Major Electricity Reform. Under a law passed on July 19, Israel will break up a monopoly held by state-owned Israel Electric Corp. (IEC) and open the country’s electricity sector to new

Several milestones have been reached at nuclear power plant construction sites around the world including on the Leningrad II-2, Novovoronezh II-2, Barakah, and Plant Vogtle projects. Russian Progress At the Leningrad site, Rosatom—the Russian state atomic energy corporation—reported on August 7 that the main turbine equipment installation for Phase II Unit 2 was completed. The […]

According to the International Energy Agency, global natural gas trade has grown by more than 40% over the past 15 years. Over the next five years, current trade flows are expected to significantly diversify, boosted by development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure. LNG trade, which grew by 11% in 2017 to 391 billion cubic […]

Two nuclear energy milestones were reached in the past week, as the world’s first commercial AP1000 and EPR reactors were connected to China’s power grid. Westinghouse announced Sanmen 1, the first AP1000 unit, was connected to the grid June 30, one day after Électricité de France (EDF) connected the first EPR reactor—Taishan 1—to the system. […]

Nigeria’s government joined with Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corp. (Rosatom) last year with a goal to develop the country’s first nuclear power plant, a plan that both sides confirmed and talked about

The U.S. Department of the Treasury on June 11 slapped sanctions on five Russian firms and three Russian individuals for several “significant” malicious cyber-enabled activities, including cyber intrusions in the U.S. energy grid. The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the sanctions are authorized under President Obama’s Executive Order 13694, “Blocking the Property of Certain […]

China’s Installed Capacity Grows 7.6% in 2017. China’s installed power capacity in 2017 grew 7.6% compared to the end of 2016 and now stands at 1,777 GW—higher than U.S. installed capacity of 1,198 GW as

Russian government cyber threat actors have infiltrated workstations and servers of corporate networks containing data output from industrial control systems (ICS) or supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems associated with an unnamed number of power plants, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has warned. The dire warning issued by the agency’s U.S. Computer Emergency […]

The world’s nuclear power industry has been busy in the new year, with several construction projects reaching key milestones as 2018 began. EPR Units Making Progress Four EPR nuclear units are under construction in three countries: Olkiluoto 3 in Finland began construction in August 2005, Flamanville 3 in France began construction in December 2007, and […]

We were standing in Volgodonsk, Russia, on a bridge that connected the third and fourth units of the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The fourth unit was under construction, and the deputy chief engineer of the Rostov NPP, Alexander Belyaev, told us that we were about to witness something unique. It was December 1, 2015, […]

Banking on natural gas as it moves away from coal, the European Union (EU) in September adopted new rules that require member states to help neighbors affected by supply disruptions.  The new rules adopted by

Russia’s nuclear power station operations arm Rosenergoatom brought its most powerful nuclear reactor to date into commercial operation in February 2017, marking the latest evolution of its Water-Water

A joint venture of two Russian companies is building a solar power project in southern Siberia based on heterojunction technology (HJT), which is touted as a high-efficiency solar cell concept. Researchers

The energy sector has been hit with almost one-third of the cyberattacks against U.S. industrial facilities in recent years. It is among the top issues, along with reliability, environmental regulations, and

U.S. officials said Russian government hackers have broken into systems at U.S. nuclear power plants and also have made cyber intrusions into the business systems of other energy companies, according to several reports over the past week. Cybersecurity experts say the threats against U.S. facilities are real and likely to continue, as power plant operators […]

Beyond the bitter disputes that have recently cropped up between Ukraine and Russia concerning Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent separatist violence in Ukraine’s Donbass region

Russia Marks Milestone with Commercial Operation of Third-Generation Reactor. After nearly a decade of construction, the first advanced third-generation VVER-1200 nuclear reactor began commercial operation on

A bill to protect the U.S. power grid from cyber-attacks reintroduced by members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee urges a “retro” approach to cybersecurity using a novel analog “disrupter” technology to guard computer-connected operating systems. U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Angus King (I-Maine) on January 10 renewed their support of the Securing Energy […]

A joint strategy released by the governments of the U.S. and Canada to thwart the growing threat of cyberattacks on the electric grid sets three priorities that the countries said would be critical to preserving energy and national security. The “Joint United States-Canada Electric Grid Security and Resilience Strategy,” released on December 15, outlines three […]