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EPA Schedules One Hearing on Proposed ACE Rule

September 12, 2018

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on September 10 announced it will hold one hearing to get input from the public and stakeholders on its Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, the Trump administration’s replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP).

The EPA said it has scheduled an all-day hearing October 1 at the Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago, which is home to EPA’s Region 5 headquarters. The agency did not rule out the possibility of more hearings. The Clean Air Act requires the agency to hold at least one hearing on proposed regulations, if requested, and comments received during any formal hearing are noted as part of the official regulatory record.

The Trump administration held one public hearing and three listening sessions after it said it would repeal the CPP, which was never implemented and remains in legal limbo. The Obama administration held four hearings after it proposed the CPP.

The Sierra Club, which along with other environmental groups has been critical of the ACE rule, in a statement charged the EPA—specifically agency head Andrew Wheeler—is fearful of how the proposed regulation is being viewed by the public.…

‪The Curious Case of a Two-Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor

September 10, 2018

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A rock sample from Oklo in Gabon, the world’s oldest and only natural reactor. Courtesy: IAEA Bulletin

Scientists appear to have unraveled the mystery of uranium ore found at a mine in Oklo region of the Central African state of Gabon that exhibits a lower proportion of uranium-235 (U-235)—the fissile sort.

According to an August 10 bulletin from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the first response that physicists had when they first found the high-grade ore in 1972 was that it wasn’t natural: “At first, all the physicists could think of was that the uranium ore had gone through artificial fission, i.e. that some of the U-235 isotopes had been forced to split in a nuclear chain reaction. This could explain why the ratio was lower than normal,” the bulletin says.

All natural uranium today contains 0.720% of U-235. “If you were to extract it from the Earth’s crust, or from rocks from the moon or in meteorites, that’s what you would find.…

Report: 10% of U.S. Coal Mined in 1H2018 Went to Plants Scheduled to Retire

September 8, 2018

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More than 10% of the coal mined from eight U.S. regions in the first half of 2018 was sent to coal plants scheduled for retirement between this year and 2032, according to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The trend is another troubling sign for the struggling coal industry.

The analysis released September 7 comes two weeks after the Trump administration announced changes to emissions regulations in an effort to allow coal-fired plants to run longer. The administration has made helping the coal industry a priority, citing coal generation’s importance to national security.

The report also said that more than 6% of the coal mined in the United States in 2017 was delivered to power plants that are scheduled for closure over the next decade. The information comes from an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis of coal production and fuel delivery data.

S&P said just more than 330 million tons of coal was produced by U.S. basins in the first six months of this year, and at least 33.6 million tons went to plants that are scheduled to be shuttered by 2032.…

Several States Urge Federal Court to Rule on Clean Power Plan

September 6, 2018

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Seventeen states have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject the Trump administration’s efforts to further delay the court’s decision on legal challenges to the Clean Power Plan.

In a filing with the court on September 4, the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, noted that the case—State of West Virginia, et. al. v EPA (No. 15-1363)—claimed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken “undue advantage” of the now 18-month-long abeyance granted to the agency by the federal court to allow it to review the rule.

The states were joined by the District of Columbia, and the cities of Boulder, Colorado; Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and South Miami, as well as Florida’s Broward County.

The EPA is “prolonging the delay through a series of notices that do not come close to fulfilling EPA’s statutory obligations,” the filing claims.…

THE BIG PICTURE: Trump’s Regulatory Targets

September 4, 2018

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President Trump campaigned on a promise to reduce regulation and control regulatory costs. One of his first actions after taking office was to issue an executive order calling for the elimination of two existing regulations for every one new regulation issued. Toward that end, the Trump administration has acted or sought to reverse more than 70 environmental rules. Among them are several Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations governing air, water, and waste emissions from the nation’s power plants. Here’s where those rules stand today. Notes: FIP = federal implementation plan; SIP = state implementation plan. Sources: Environmental Integrity Project, Environmental Law at Harvard, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School

1. Clean Power Plan

The EPA released a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan in October 2017, saying the rule “exceeds the agency’s statutory authority.” In July 2018, the EPA sent a replacement plan to President Trump for review, saying it would seek public comment on the new measure after a White House review is completed but it did not provide a timeline.…

Select Boiler Chemistry in the Design Phase of Project Life

September 2, 2018

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On many combined cycle projects, the major decisions about boiler chemistry are left until after the plant has been designed, equipment is procured, and construction is well underway. However, the best time to make these chemistry decisions is in the design phase of the project. That enables the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor to design the plant that best fits the selected chemistry program (Figure 1).

1. Water treatment decisions. The EPC contractors should design the plant that best fits the users’ selected chemistry program. Courtesy: Colleen Scholl, HDR Inc.

Phosphate Versus Oxidizing, All-Volatile Treatment

For example, consider the selection of a phosphate program versus an oxidizing, all-volatile treatment (AVT-O) program. Of these two, the phosphate program requires more-responsive instrumentation and controls, because of the potential problems of phosphate carryover and hideout. If the EPC contractor has a priori knowledge that phosphates will be used, its engineers can specify highly responsive pH and phosphate instruments, and can ensure those instrument signals are transmitted to automated chemical-injection pumps that feed into multiple injection points (Figure 2).…