What nasty problem do nuclear, coal, and wind power share? It’s waste disposal. In the well-known case of nuclear power, the problem is what to do with long-lived, highly radioactive spent fuel. It’s a problem the industry and the U.S. government have been failing to solve for more than 70 years. For coal, its waste… More What About Wind Waste?
Georgia Power’s 1,117-MW Vogtle 3 nuclear unit, the first U.S. nuclear reactor ordered since 1974 to reach this far, is now splitting atoms. The Westinghouse AP-1000, one of two new pressurized water reactors under construction at the existing two-unit Vogtle site, went critical on Monday (March 6), beginning a process that should lead up to… More Atomic Assemblage: Vogtle, EDF, Vistra, Jail
The two-step regulatory dance between the old Trump administration and the current Biden administration continues with the Environmental Protection Agency’s mid-February decision on the scientific basis for lowering mercury air emissions from coal-fired power plants. The choreography is simple. Trump takes one step back from prior consensus regulation. Biden takes one step forward. The initial… More The Dance of Regulation: Biden Restores Rationale for Mercury Air Rules
NuScale’s small modular reactor project on federal land in Idaho, designed to provide electricity to Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a joint action agency serving 50 municipal utilities in Utah, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming, has survived another near-death experience. Facing a vote by the participants in its project for six light-water… More Small Stories about Modular Reactors
Is the Biden administration prematurely pushing development of a particular way of generating hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels? That’s the argument in a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The analysis takes aim at including methane as a hydrogen feedstock, using carbon capture and sequestration technology to… More DOE’s Hydrogen Development Program Draws Fire
The Virginia legislature last week (Feb. 25) in the dying hours of the 2022 session approved a bill to change how the Old Dominion will regulate its giant, home-grown electric utility holding company, Dominion Energy. The bipartisan legislation is widely billed as, in the words of the Virginia Mercury, the statewide, online news service, “sweeping… More Virginia Solons Diminish Dominion?
“Befuddled” is the word American Public Power Association lobbyist Corry Marshall offers as his initial reaction to the Biden Administration’s Department of Energy proposal to increase energy efficiency standards for electric distribution transformers. For years, the electric utility industry, home builders, and transformer manufacturers have been highlighting a supply chain shortage of the transformers needed… More DOE’s Confusing Transformer Transactions
Environmentalists, native tribes, and local Nevada landowners have filed a notice of intent to seek an emergency stay of a federal district court ruling earlier this month giving a conditional green light to the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada near the Oregon border. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno let the Lithium… More Along the Lithium Trail
Turkey: The devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria has again raised the issue of whether nuclear power plants can withstand such events. Earthquake safety has long been a consideration in the U.S. and elsewhere, as geologic faults are common and earthquakes entirely unpredictable. Earthquake resistance is on the safety agenda of most advanced, nuclear countries.… More Nuclear Roundup: Turkish Temblor; Hinkley Costs; EDF Woes
A federal court judge has overturned a plan to expand Montana’s only underground coal mine, ruling that the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) repeated approvals, the most recent in 2020, of the 7,100-acre, 175-million-ton expansion plan by Signal Peak Energy for the Bull Mountains Mine No. 1 near Roundup, Montana,… More Court Orders New Environmental Review for Notorious Montana Coal Mine