Canada Plan to Store Nuclear Waste near Lake Huron Draws U.S. Ire
The post Canada Plan to Store Nuclear Waste near Lake Huron Draws U.S. Ire appeared first on POWER Magazine.
A group of U.S. lawmakers has asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reconsider that country’s proposed plan to store its nuclear waste at a site near Lake Huron, northeast of Detroit, Michigan.
The site, at Huron-Konloss/South Bruce, in Bruce County, Ontario, is one of two communities chosen by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), which consists of Canada’s nuclear power generating companies and includes Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corp., and Hydro-Quebec. The NWMO was established by Canada’s parliament in 2002, and is responsible for designing and implementing the country’s plan for the long-term management of used nuclear fuel.
Bruce County is home to Ontario Power Generation’s Bruce Nuclear Generation Station, the country’s largest nuclear power plant with more than 6 GW of generation capacity. The station, known as Bruce Power, has eight reactors, the most of any operating nuclear station worldwide.…
Connecticut Gives Go-Ahead for 804-MW Offshore Wind Project
The post Connecticut Gives Go-Ahead for 804-MW Offshore Wind Project appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Vineyard Wind’s 804-MW Park City project was given the go-ahead by Connecticut officials on Dec. 5, with regulators saying Vineyard’s bid in an offshore wind solicitation was “lower than any other publicly announced offshore wind project in North America.”
Vineyard Wind competed against other groups in the bidding, including developers backed by Ørsted and Shell. The company now will negotiate contracts with the state’s two major utilities, Eversource and United Illuminating Co.
The Park City development is considered the largest renewable energy project in Connecticut history. State officials said it could provide about 14% of the state’s electricity. The project’s turbines would be located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and would not be visible from Connecticut’s shoreline.
The project includes redevelopment of port facilities in Bridgeport Harbor. Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Thaaning Pedersen in a conference call on Thursday would not disclose the project’s cost, but the price for a similar Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast is about $ 3 billion.…
China Ramping Renewables, and Building More Coal Plants
The post China Ramping Renewables, and Building More Coal Plants appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Officials in China in 2017 said the country—the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases—would move away from coal-fired power generation. They promptly canceled more than 100 coal power plant construction projects.
But coal remains king in China, which in the past two years has added 43 GW of coal-fired generation capacity, according to a report released in mid-November by Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Air quality has improved in some parts of the country; the Swiss firm IQAir AirVisual in September said Beijing no longer is among the world’s 200 most-polluted cities, and said particulate levels are at their lowest point since record-keeping began in 2008. But the IQAir report said other areas of China continue to see upticks in pollution as local officials back coal-fired generation in an effort to support economic growth.
A Greenpeace official—the environmental group issues global air quality reports in concert with IQAir—recently said emissions of nitrogen oxide and other pollutants rose last year in northern China’s industrial region as cement and steel production increased to supply a government-backed flurry of construction.…