• New York denies water permit for Indian Point nuclear plant

    The New York Department of Environmental Conservation denied water-quality certification to Indian Point nuclear power plant; the operator requires the certification to extend by twenty years the license to operate the 2,000-megawatt plant

  • Japan plans nuclear power expansion

    Japan imports 80 percent of its energy; the government has a plan aiming to reduce that figure to just 30 percent by 2030; the key to the plan: building eight new nuclear reactors by 2020 — adding to the country’s 54 operating reactors; Japan is also about to resume operations of the world’s only fast-breeder reactor; the plan faces public opposition, especially in light of Japan’s history of earthquakes

  • Experts say smart meters are vulnerable to hacking

    In the United States alone, more than eight million smart meters have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly sixty million should be in place by 2020; security experts are worried that this rush to deployment of smart meters ignores serious security vulnerabilities: the interactivity which makes smart meters so attractive also makes them vulnerable to hackers, because each meter essentially is a computer connected to a vast network

  • Smart grid attack likely

    The smart grid’s distributed approach exposes these networks and systems, especially in the early phases of deployment; the communication among these networks and systems will be predominantly wireless and it is assumed they will be sniffed, penetrated, hacked, and service will be denied

  • NIST request for input on Smart Grid Interface

    NIST launches a blog seeking public comment and discussion on three aspects of Smart Grid implementation; considers further online discussions in the future.

  • Operator of shut-down Monju fast reactor seeks resumption of operations

    Japan’s only breeder reactor was shut down in 1995 after sodium coolant leak; the reactor’s operator now seeks to restart the reactor, saying that a vast remodeling effort would prevent a similar accident in the fufutre; critics are no so sure, pointing to glitches affecting the reactor’s leak detector and other defects which have caused its restart to be put off four times since the coolant was infused again in May 2007

  • Federal loans notwithstanding, Georgia nuclear power plant faces hurdles

    The Obama administration has signaled its interest in expanding the U.S. domestic nuclear power industry by giving $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for a Georgia nuclear power plant expansion; critics say that the American tax-payer is at risk; that the original nuclear reactor design has been rejected by the NRC, and that there is no solution for the nuclear waste problem

  • Concerns in Brockton over proposed power plant

    Residents in Brockton, Massachusetts do not want Advanced Power Services of Boston to build a 350-megawatt plant near their neighborhood; they point to the weekend’s explosion in a power plant in Connecticut as reason for added concern

  • Utilities to bolster smart grid cybersecurity

    Annual spending on cybersecurity by electric utilities will triple by 2015, driven by investment in equipment protection and configuration management; between 2010 and 2015, Utility companies will invest more than $21 billion on cybersecurity

  • Lithuania shuts down nuclear plant

    Lithuania closes Chernobyl-style facility which supplies 80 percent of the country’s electricity; closure is a condition of EU membership

  • Smart grid runs into trouble over powerline standard, I

    The U.S. government has awarded $4 billion in grants to build a smart electric grid; appliance makers need an easy, low cost way to plug into the grid; today they face as many as a dozen wired and wireless choices, most of them far too expensive and high bandwidth, focused on carrying digital music and video around the home rather than on helping save energy

  • Boeing, Edison awarded part of $620 million to build smart grid

    The Department of Energy the other day awarded $620 million in funding for building a more efficient and resilient power grid

  • U.S. grid-security measures may hurt Canadian companies

    The growing concern in the United States over the security of the national grid has lead to security measures — and proposed legislation — aiming to make the security of the grid more robust; trouble is, much of the U.S. electricity comes from Canada, and some of the contemplated security measures my disrupt transmission of power from across the border

  • Nuclear leaks at Three Mile Island investigated

    There was another radioactive leak at Three Mile Island, the scene of the U.S. worst nuclear power accident; NRC said on Sunday there was no threat to public health or safety; investigators this weekend were trying to determine the cause of radiological contamination inside the nuclear facility’s containment building

  • Doubts raised on nuclear industry viability

    There are two problems facing the nuclear power industry: civilian and military stockpiles and re-enriched or reprocessed uranium sources contribute 25,000 of the 65,000 tons of uranium used globally each year; the rest is mined directly, but scientists say that nobody knows where the mining industry can find enough uranium to make up the shortfall; also, the cost per kilowatt of capacity generated by nuclear power is $4,000; generating identical capacity from coal costs $3,000, and the cost for natural gas generation is $800; this makes the nuclear option a big financial gamble