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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev marked the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster today with a visit to site of the power plant and announced he wanted new world rules covering safety. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday talked up nuclear power as the “safest” form of energy on the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl amid fears linked to the disaster in Japan….. Italy abandoned nuclear power in 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster. Berlusconi has promised to re-introduce nuclear power in order to cut power bills …. Ahh, if only new nukes could cut power bills (see Intro to nuclear power ). But then Berlusconi is the Charlie Sheen of Italian leaders. The notable U.S. nuclear event leading up to the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl was the plug-pulling on one of the few remaining vestiges of the once-vaunted nuclear Renaissance. As ABC News money reported last week : Blaming uncertainties arising from the nuclear crisis in Japan, NRG Energy says it will write down its $481 million investment in two planned new nuclear reactors in South Texas. NRG Chief Executive David Crane said Tuesday it was unlikely the two reactors could be completed in a timely fashion.
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NRG to abandon two new South Texas nuclear plants, write down $481 million investment – On 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, U.S. nuke Renaissance still…
The governing board of the public-private Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) has voted in favor of a new standard and a set of guidelines important for making the long-planned smart electricity grid a reality. The documents address the need for wireless communications among grid-connected devices as well as the ability to upgrade household electricity meters as the smart grid evolves. The SGIP identifies a meter upgradeability standard and wireless communications guidelines as critical for achieving an energy-efficient, modern power grid with seamlessly interoperable parts. The body is also focusing on 17 other standards development projects called “Priority Action Plans,” or PAPs. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created the SGIP, a group of public and private organisations, to coordinate the development of consensus-based smart-grid standards. According to Erich Gunther, the SGIP’s administrator, the two new PAPs are important for ensuring real-time communication, which will be a hallmark of the new grid
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A better grid needs better standards
The United States Department of Energy has been supplying grants across the country in order to promote the expansion of renewable energy. American Indian tribes in Oklahoma are some of the recent recipients of such grants. Oklahoma is a state which is considered to have significant potential for wind energy. Currently the state has thirteen wind farms and four more are in the process of being built
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Cheyenne And Arapaho Tribes To Save $9.2 Million Through Use Of Wind Turbines
You love your laptop. It’s a constant on-the-go-companion for working outside the office, or for keeping up with friends. The problem is that when your battery runs low, there isn’t always have an outlet handy.
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Portable Computer Solar Chargers: How to Choose
by Christopher Mims. New York City’s mayor Michael Bloomberg puts birds on things, if by “birds” you mean solar panels and “things” you mean the city’s myriad defunct landfills. The so-called greening of brownfields is a nationwide trend, since landfills and other plots of ruined land close to or even within cities are often not suitable for other applications. You can’t build houses on a capped landfill, and short of turning them into parks — an expensive and, to some people, kinda gross proposition — they have few applications. Solar panel installations, however, tend to be light-weight and require nothing more than open space. The closer renewable power plants are to the users of their electricity, the more efficient they are, because losses from transmission of their electricity are minimized. So urban brownfields that would otherwise go unused are uniquely suited to hosting large arrays of solar panels
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Bloomberg wants to cover New York City’s landfills with solar panels