The NEI Afternoon Clip File

Here are some of the news clips we're reading at NEI this afternoon.

Canada is feeling the burn as temperatures remain high and power stations go offline for repairs.

Canada's most populous province will rely more heavily on U.S. neighbours for power this week amid soaring demand and generating stations that are down for repairs, Ontario's electricity market watchdog warned Tuesday.

Five generating units were offline to undergo repair and maintenance, pulling some 3,000 megawatts out of Ontario's electricity grid.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) today visited Constellation's Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, the Dominion Cove Point LNG facility and each facility's surrounding community to review their security measures. Here's what he had to say:

As a proponent of nuclear power, I was pleased to visit Calvert Cliffs today to tour the facility and I was very impressed by their efforts to keep their facility and the surrounding community safe and secure," said Congressman Hoyer. "I was pleased to see the additional security measures in place since 9/11 and particularly that this world class facility has put a security program in place that makes the safety of Calvert County and their employees a top priority.

I was also pleased to have the opportunity to be briefed by the U.S. Coast Guard on their efforts to ensure the security of the Chesapeake Bay, particularly when a tanker is in transit in the Bay and docked at the Dominion Cove Point offshore platform. I am pleased both Constellation and Dominion are working with federal and state authorities on security especially in light of their expansion plans.

And I appreciated the opportunity to see first hand the talented Coast Guardsmen at work who we have protecting our coastline. Our community and our nation are grateful for their efforts.

Last week I supported the comprehensive Energy bill that will help the nation and the state of Maryland meet our energy needs. This bill will help strengthen the economy and create jobs in Southern Maryland by encouraging investments in energy infrastructure such as the expansion of nuclear and natural gas facilities like Calvert Cliffs and Dominion Cove Point.

A uranium seam has been discovered in South Australia that is more than six times larger than previous estimates. Needless to say, South Australia is thrilled:

"It's a magnificent deposit and something SA should be proud of," said Marathon chief executive John Santich yesterday.

"We only started drilling in February and, rather than the reserve being downgraded, we have found out it's rich beyond measure."

Interest in uranium stocks enjoyed a major boost yesterday with 12.7 million or almost one-third of Marathon shares changing hands, sending the share price up 41c to 79.5c.

Dr Santich said the find confirmed SA's place as one of the world's largest uranium provinces.

Come back tomorrow morning for more news from the NEI Clip File.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics

Sneak Peek

There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?

A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.

Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution. In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…

NEI Nuclear Notes

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