Around the Energy Blogs

It occurred to me over the weekend that we haven't been visiting a number of our neighbors in the energy blogosphere, and it's far past time that we corrected that oversight.

The Ambivalent Engineer has a question about nuclear fuel:

So what is the burnup limit, and do operators currently burn fuel all the way to the limit?

Rod Adams has the answer.

Our friend Stewart Peterson has moved Nuclear is our Future to a new address. Please update your bookmarks.

Thanks to some new legislation working its way through Congress, the Cape Wing Project might be in trouble. The Watthead is concerned.

The Guardian has published another dubious poll. Randall Parker has his doubts too.

Those of you interested in environmentally responsible transportation might be cheered to discover that the ZAP is coming to America:

After a number of false starts ZAP (PCX:ZP) now claims it is about to start selling the Smart Car, the fuel-efficient micro-car from Europe. ZAP is preparing to distribute the cars along with other models through a dealer network it is forming in the U.S. that specializes in advanced automotive technologies.

Click here for more from Green Car Congress. And Green Car Congress also has some interesting news from the hybrid-transportation world:

Orion VII series-hybrid buses operated by New York City Transit (NYCT) on the city'’s most severe duty cycles achieved up to 45% better fuel economy than diesel buses and 100% improvement compared to comparable natural gas buses on an energy-equivalent basis, according to the results of a study released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Anything that diverts natural gas to other uses sounds good to me. Click here for the numbers.

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

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Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

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