Ohio’s FirstEnergy electric utility holding company has agreed to disgorge some $26 million it collected under legislation (HB 6) passed to rescue two of the company’s uneconomic power plants with more than a billion dollars in subsidies after it became clear the legislation passed as a result of a utility-led $60 million bribery scheme. Akron-based … More FirstEnergy to refund nuclear bailout charges as DeWine repeals most of HB 6

When it comes to nuclear power plants, is smaller better? Significant players in the nuclear business have been touting small modular reactors (SMRs) for more than a decade as a way to get new nuclear plants into the U.S. electricity ecosystem. Giants such as Babcock & Wilcox and Westinghouse have touted their designs, invested millions, … More Is smaller better in Nukes? No, says new analysis

China talks the nuclear talk. But walks the coal walk. That’s the conclusion in a new article in Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of the Environment. Journalist Michael Standaert, who covers environment and energy in China and has lived there since 2007, writes, “China’s National People’s Congress meetings, which ended earlier … More China: talk nuclear, walk coal

More fallout from the failed Ohio nuclear bailout legislation. FirstEnergy, the utility that lobbied furiously for House Bill 6 to keep uneconomic Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants operating at the expense of Ohio customers, says it won’t disgorge $30 million collected so far under the subsidy.   The legislation passed after Akron-based FirstEnergy allegedly used … More Ohio nuclear bailout: a roundup of regulatory, legislative and death developments

Advanced nuclear power technologies based on designs that are not light-water reactors are not an improvement on LWR machines and may be worse, according to a detailed analysis in a new 140-page report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Edwin Lyman, a PhD nuclear physicist and head of the UCS nuclear power program at UCS, … More UCS report critiques non-LWR advanced nuclear proposals

San Antonio Texas’s city-owned energy utility, CPS Energy, has sued the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), charging that the grid operator during the February deep freeze charged it “excessive, illegitimate and illegal prices.” The utility filed the suit in Bexar County District Court. CPS Energy CEO Paula Gold-Williams said, “During a state declared disaster, … More San Antonio muni sues ERCOT over freeze charges

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), testifying in Congress this week, pointed directly at the natural gas industry in Texas for a major share of blame for the February rolling electricity blackouts. It’s an issue that economists have earlier raised. NERC CEO James Robb March 11 told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, … More NERC points to role of gas in Texas freeze

NRRI, the National Regulatory Research Institute, an arm of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, finds a series of regulatory failures that exacerbated the Texas grid collapse. The work by NRRI economists Carl Pechman and Elliott Nethercut concludes, echoing earlier analyses of failures of the Texas regulatory system: “The Texas [Public Utilities Commission] and … More How Texas failed the February freeze

Who and what to blame for the February electric grid freeze in the Lone Star State? The Electric Reliability Council of Texas? The state public utility commission? The generators who haven’t winterized their plants? Too much wind power? The autarky of the Texas electric grid? The deregulation of the Texas electric grid? No electric generation … More Texas freeze: blame natural gas markets?

For fusion energy enthusiasts, hope seems to spring eternal each spring, as the Congressional money machine begins to gear up. That evergreen story holds true again this year, as reported in Science magazine on Feb. 19. The magazine article relied on a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, calling, no surprise here, for … More Is tritium the roadblock to fusion energy?