The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board on Aug. 20 will vote on a proposal to convert the utility’s six wet-storage facilities for coal ash to dry storage. TVA’s Coal Combustion Products group, working in alliance with Stantec and URS Washington Group, drew up the proposal after last December’s catastrophic collapse of a wet-coal-ash storage facility at the utility’s Kingston Fossil Plant. Conversion will require changes in ash-handling equipment and creating storage facilities in configurations that will be decided after board approval, says Barbara Martocci, TVA spokeswoman. She would not give budget figures until after board approval. United Conveyor Corp., Waukegan, Ill.,
On the road to the “nuclear renaissance,” Canada’s nuclear-power industry hit a speed bump. Declining electricity demand has scotched plans to add as much as 7,200 MW of greenfield nuclear powerplants in Ontario. But even as it withdrew applications for eight new reactors at two sites, the country’s largest independent generator pledged to complete refurbishment of two laid-up units on its flagship site and to continue developing new nuclear powerplants in Saskatchewan and Alberta. If built, the plants in those provinces would be western Canada’s first nuclear plants. Photo: Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd. Babcock & Wilcox Canada is supplying
The U.S. potentially could reduce non-transportation energy consumption by 23% by 2020 and greenhouse gases by 1.1 gigatons annually, but this goal is achievable only if significant barriers are addressed and overcome, says a new report from McKinsey & Co. These barriers include $520 billion in needed up-front investment and a fragmented network of buildings, devices, building codes and other requirements. The potential for reducing energy consumption in the U.S. is huge, but coordinated national and regional strategies are needed to unlock the existing potential, says the New York City-based management consulting firm in its July 29 report. “Energy efficiency
Bentley Systems Inc., Exton, Pa., released an information model-based product for electrical substation design. Bentley Substation V8i integrates two- and three-dimensional tools and can shift from schematic line drawings to 3-D object views on the fly. Reports and bills-of-materials can be generated from the data as required. It draws on a database of more than 2 million electrical parts. Three-D modeling helps optimize site layout, integrates with Bentley’s Project Wise system and is priced at $15,000 a seat.
Work is to begin in mid-August on a $3.4-billion, 1,000-mile crude-oil pipeline from northern Canada to Superior, Wis., says Canadian owner Enbridge Inc., Edmonton, Alberta. Enbridge is burying a 36-in. pipe that will carry 450,000 barrels of crude oil daily, with a 326-mile U.S. route running from North Dakota to Wisconsin. The project will run parallel to another 20-in. pipeline that was constructed in 2009. The project was awarded to U.S. Pipeline, Houston, and Precision Pipeline of Wisconsin.
A clean-coal project abandoned by the Dept. of Energy last year is coming back to life with DOE’s Record of Decision and a cooperative agreement signed with the FutureGen Alliance. The ROD and agreement will allow the alliance to proceed with preliminary design, refine the cost estimate and develop a funding plan. DOE launched FutureGen in 2003 as a public-private partnership to engineer, construct and operate a near-zero-emissions, 275-MW powerplant fueled by coal at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
The U.S. Energy Dept. will award $57 million in economic-stimulus funding to support local, university and private smart-grid projects. About $47 million will supplement eight existing smart-grid demonstration projects now planned across the U.S., according to DOE. The remainder is going to local governments to fund modification of emergency- preparedness plans that will consider smart-grid technologies and renewable resources in transmission infrastructure. The awards are part of billions of dollars available for smart-grid projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. DOE also announced on July 20 it has chosen Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, as the location of a smart-grid
To break the routine of cost and schedule overruns in Canadian nuclear construction, the operator of North America’s largest nuclear powerplant hopes to combine U.S. nuclear project management expertise with Canadian engineering and construction skills in a company to target construction in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. It could be ready for business by next year. Photo: Bruce Power L.P. Sauger (center) is negotiating. The company is in “the formative stages,” says John Sauger, senior vice president for Bruce Power Ltd., Tiverton, Ontario. “The concept is a holding company, structured as a limited-liability partnership.” With managers from U.S. nuclear contractors
With an installed capacity of over 10,500 MW, India is currently the fifth-largest generator of wind power in the world. As it adds about 1,200 MW of wind capacity per year, the potential is far from depleted, but developers are faced with challenges in erecting the turbines in remote areas. Photo: Regen Wind Transporting large turbine blades to construction sites poses challenges. Unlike their Western counterparts, Indian developers often must find innovative means to transport large turbines through narrow, crowded roads to ill-equipped, hilly sites. “Non-availability of transport and cranes, lack of experienced manpower and infrastructure [lacking] such things as
The world’s first floating nuclear powerplant is currently under construction at a shipyard in St. Petersburg. It will be 144 m long and30 m wide and house two 35-MW reactors. It will supply power in remote areas. Upon completion in 2012, crews will tow the plant to the port of Vilyuchinsk on the Kamchatka peninsula, where it will supply power to a submarine base. Russia’s United Industrial Corp. (OPK) is building the FNPP at its Baltiiskii Zavod shipyard for owner Concern Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear utility. Russia has extensive experience with nuclear-propelled submarines and icebreakers, and the reactors on the
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