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The U.S. Senate gave final passage to an energy and water spending bill Oct. 15 that denies President Barack Obama’s request for $30 million for the Department of Energy to restart production of plutonium-238 (pu-238) for NASA deep space missions. The House of Representatives originally approved $10 million of Obama’s pu-238 request for next year, but ultimately adopted the Senate’s position before voting Oct. 1 to approve the conference report on the 2010 Energy-Water Appropriations bill (H.R. 3183). The bill now heads to Obama, who is expected to sign it. NASA relies on pu-238 to power long-lasting spacecraft batteries that...

Public Discourse: Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies? Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition. On Thursday, Steven...

NASA is running out of the special kind of plutonium needed to power deep space probes, worrying planetary scientists who say the U. S. urgently needs to restart production of plutonium-238. But it's unclear whether Congress will provide the $30 million that the administration requested earlier this year for the Department of Energy to get a new program going. Nuclear weapons use plutonium-239, but NASA depends on something quite different: plutonium-238. A marshmallow-sized pellet of plutonium-238, encased in metal, gives off a lot of heat. "If you dim the lights a little bit, it glows a little red, because it's...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Vice President ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release September 4, 2009 Vice President Biden Announces Finalized $535 Million Loan Guarantee for Solyndra Recovery Act funding will accelerate job creation and help expand marketplace for innovative solar electric panels FREMONT, CA – Vice President Joe Biden, appearing via satellite from Washington D.C., today announced the Department of Energy has finalized a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, Inc., which manufactures innovative cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels that provide clean, renewable energy. The funding will finance construction of the...

Our Organizer-in-Chief will address students across America come September 8. In preparation for that teaching moment, Teaching Ambassador Fellows at the Department of Education have prepared a Menu of Classroom Activities to prepare the kiddies. Here are a few of the leading questions: Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials ...? Why is what they say important? What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do?

For Alternative And Advanced Vehicles Printable PDF of Map Printable PDF of Summaries listed below North Central Texas Council of Governments’ North Central Texas Alternative Fuel and Advanced Technology. The project will deploy refueling stations and alternative fuel vehicles in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The project includes a portfolio of different technologies and fuels, including B20 (three stations), ethanol E85 (three stations), compressed natural gas (three stations and 97 vehicles), electricity (four recharging sites and 34 vehicles), and 251 hybrid electric vehicles. In addition to the city fleets, high mileage and high visibility fleets are included, such as Coca-Cola, Sysco,...

Death Knell For Nuclear Power? August 03, 2009 Energy: A Senate vote to kill funding for the spent fuel repository in Nevada shows the Democratic Party and this administration aren't serious about energy independence, economic growth or environmental Killing the storage facility for the spent fuel rods produced by the nation's nuclear power industry has long been a dream of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama. Last week, the Senate granted their wish, voting to deny the resources needed to complete a review necessary for Yucca Mountain to open. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid,...

Energy: A Senate vote to kill funding for the spent fuel repository in Nevada shows the Democratic Party and this administration aren't serious about energy independence, economic growth or environmental protection.Killing the storage facility for the spent fuel rods produced by the nation's nuclear power industry has long been a dream of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama. Last week, the Senate granted their wish, voting to deny the resources needed to complete a review necessary for Yucca Mountain to open. "This is a major victory for Nevada," said Reid, who is up for re-election next year. "I...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration will not grant a $2 billion loan guarantee for a planned uranium-enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio, causing the initiative to go into financial meltdown, the company and independent sources confirmed last night. The U.S. Department of Energy's decision means "we are now forced to initiate steps to demobilize the project," said Elizabeth Stuckle, a spokeswoman for USEC. That's the company that is trying to build the $3.5 billion advanced-technology plant on the same site where it ran the Cold War-era uranium-enrichment facility that has been shuttered since 2001... "Instead of creating thousands of jobs across...

August 26, 1945. Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. Twenty four year old Harry Daghlian is working late, and alone. Both are violations of safety protocol, but Harry doesn’t care. He’s good at his job, and he’s careful. He doesn’t have to be working this late, six days ago the Japanese surrendered, and the war is over. But, that doesn’t mean his work isn’t still important. The bombs he helped build won the war, and he’s going to keep making them as long as he can. This night, Harry is working on placing the final tungsten bricks in a neutron...

Cambridge — An over-confident doe seen bounding through Harvard Square accidentally impaled itself while jumping over a wrought iron fence Tuesday morning. According to Cambridge Deputy Fire Chief Jack Gelinas, both police and fire responded to the front gate of an old historic church off Brattle Street around 7 a.m. after several calls from residents in the neighborhood. The fence the animal gored herself on encircles a historic Harvard Square cemetery known as The Old Cambridge Burying Ground next to Christ Church. The scene was not pretty, Gelinas said.

Exactly what was Jimmy Carter’s biggest failure? Carter screwed us with the DoE, but there’s more. *Carter’s July 15, 1979 Malaise speech when he showed us he was out of hope and ideas and but full of self pity. *Giving away the Panama Canal or asking his 13 year old daughter for advice on nuclear warfare and being stupid enough to quote her. *What about the Department of Education? Bureaucrats referred to it as “E.D”, an abbreviation which has another meaning today, but might very well apply to the Department of Education as well. *Maybe it was the endless gas...

The GOP platform in 1996 stated: "The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education." President Bush let Ted Kennedy write his education bill and he outspent Bill Clinton. I wonder what happened to undoing Roe v. Wade...what happened to getting rid of AMTRAK? It seems to me that the GOP abandoned limited government during 8 years of George Bush and now with a full blown socialist like Obama...is Conservatism politically dead? In 1962, a Madison Square Garden...

Seven months after IBM delivered the world's fastest supercomputer, it has announced an even speedier one. IBM said on Tuesday it is developing the technology for its new Sequoia computer, with delivery scheduled in 2011 to the Department of Energy for use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sequoia will chug along at 20 petaflops per second and is one order of magnitude quicker than its predecessor. The earlier machine, delivered in June to the Energy Department, broke the 1 petaflop barrier. Peta is a term for quadrillion and FLOP stands for floating point operations per second. Sequoia, and a smaller...

Federal inspectors said Monday they will ratchet up scrutiny of the San Onofre nuclear power plant after discovering that a battery meant to power safety systems had been inoperative for four years. Plant personnel discovered in March that bolts connecting an emergency battery to a circuit breaker were loose, a problem the Nuclear Regulatory Commission attributed to poor maintenance. The commission said that the twin-reactor plant near San Clemente, run by Rosemead-based Southern California Edison, remains safe, and that other backup batteries are functioning. But the commission expressed concern that the battery problem had gone unnoticed from 2004 to 2008....

So Steven Chu, President-elect Obama’s likely choice to head the Department of Energy, is a proponent of energy efficiency and conservation as the first step in rejigging America’s energy mix. But since conservation alone won’t do it, what are his ideas about finding new supplies of energy? Dr. Chu’s marquee work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the Helios Project. ... Helios has focused largely on biofuels ... is looking to make second-generation biofuels more viable. ... What about other energy sources? Big Coal won’t be very happy if Dr. Chu gets confirmed as head of the DOE—he’s really,...

Scientists angry after feds ax forest studyThe government wanted to see how forests responded to carbon dioxide. By Jeff Barnard The Associated Press Published on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 DURHAM — For more than a decade, the federal government has spent millions of dollars pumping elevated levels of carbon dioxide into small groups of trees to test how forests will respond to global warming in the next 50 years. Some scientists believe they are on the cusp of receiving key results from the time-consuming experiments. The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists...

Going down................

Governor Bob Riley has declared a state of emergency in Alabama, saying he has gotten information from the federal Department of Energy that energy shortages are likely because of Hurricane Ike. A state law that prohibits "unconscionable pricing" of items for sale or rent goes into effect when the governor has declared a state of emergency. Riley's declaration this afternoon says that "disruption of essential utility services, systems and severe energy shortages will likely occur." Earlier today, the governor's office issued a statement saying Riley had limited authority to declare an emergency. State law does not allow the governor to...

No, even more so.Remember that nifty "Foreclosure prevention and relief" law that was sponsored by Sen. Chistopher Dodd, written by Bank of America and Countrywide Credit, and signed into law by the president recently? Remember how it carried a mandatory -- yet rather tangential -- provision for federal government monitoring of all automatic payment transactions? You probably thought, "hmm." And maybe then you thought, "why'd they do that?" And then, "well, they must know what they're doin'." But some of us thought, "OK, what are the pickpockets (with the full force of the federal government) up to now?" And some...

ONE of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050. More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground. There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticises...

As fears grow over Iran secretly developing nuclear weapons, U.S. counterintelligence officials are keeping a close eye on scientists from Iran and other Muslim nations working at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, WND has learned. The Energy Department recently revoked the security clearance of an Egyptian-born nuclear physicist because he was suspected of "conflicting allegiances." Last year, DOE and FBI agents began questioning Moniem El-Ganayni, who worked on the side as a Muslim prison chaplain.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a solicitation seeking to purchase heating oil for the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve (NEHHOR) using $3 million in appropriated funds. The Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve provides an important safety cushion for millions of Americans residing in the Northeast region of the country. Due to the modest volume of heating oil expected to be purchased with the available funds, no impact on market prices is expected. In 2007 a 35,000 barrel sale was conducted to raise funds necessary to award new long-term storage contracts to fill NEHHOR to its authorized capacity...

Dennis Kucinich is currently on the floor of the House presenting his bill to impeach President George W. Bush. C-SPAN, 8:00 PM 9 Jun 2008.

There used to be a place you could turn in Gas Stations if you thought they were charging to much. Is that still out there???

Great Dane makes a deer friend Last Updated: 2:38PM BST 07/05/2008Richard AustinAs Bambi discovered, life as an orphaned fawn can be a bit scary - unless you have a friend called Rocky that is.> Doe-eyed Cindy would have been left all alone in the world were it not for the strong paternal instincts of the Great Dane, who is as protective of her as he is his puppies. Staff at the Secret World Animal Rescue Centre in Highbridge, Somerset, have been caring for Cindy since she was found close to death when she was days old. The 9st dog towers...

The Energy Department unveiled its blueprint Wednesday for spending up to $1.3 billion on multiple clean-coal power plants that would capture carbon emissions and permanently store them underground. The announcement, launching two weeks of public comment over the revised plan for the project known as FutureGen, came despite pledges by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin to scuttle the effort. The Democrat stands convinced a town in his home state of Illinois deserved the project -- all of it. FutureGen's developers -- an alliance of a dozen big power and coal companies -- tapped Mattoon, Ill., as the site in December. But...

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded more than $126.6 million to the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB) and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) for the Department’s fifth and sixth large-scale carbon sequestration projects. These industry partnerships, which are part of DOE’s Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, will conduct large volume tests in California and Ohio to demonstrate the ability of a geologic formation to safely, permanently, and economically store more than one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Subject to annual appropriations from Congress, this project including the partnership’s cost share is estimated to cost...

Organism with a taste for olive drab shows promise for greener energyLOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, May 4, 2008—A spidery fungus with a voracious appetite for military uniforms and canvas tents could hold the key to improvements in the production of biofuels, a team of government, academic and industry researchers has announced. In a paper published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers led by Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute announced that the genetic sequence of the fungus Tricoderma reesei has uncovered important clues about how the organism breaks down plant fibers into simple sugars....

The Bush administration has ear-marked $20 million in its 2009 budget toward the US Department of Energy's efforts to design nuclear power plants in the 250-to-500 megawatt range as part of its Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP). The money marks the first substantial commitment to building the new plants since President Bush announced the program in February 2006. The latest nuclear plants designed for US domestic use have capacities about 1300 megawatts. GNEP, which now includes 21 member countries, hopes to begin construction of its first reactor in a country currently without nuclear power in 2015, saying the plants will...

A Good Start by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 12, 2008 The White House has actually recommended cuts in U. S. Department of Education programs. (They are on S-5.) “The Budget proposes to terminate 23 small and narrow-purpose elementary and secondary education grant programs, saving $494 million,” reads the explanation from the U. S. Office of Management and Budget. “States and school districts that view these issues as a high priority can support them with funds provided under broad-purpose Federal education programs, such as Title I, Teacher Quality State Grants, and other programs.” “The Budget redirects the savings from these terminations...

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Oil and natural gas production at Alaska's North Slope has been declining since 1988 but the region holds promise if energy prices stay high and Congress opens key areas to exploration, the U.S. Energy Department said in a report released on Tuesday. Through 2050, the North Slope could yield up to 36 billion barrels of oil and 137 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under optimistic assumptions, the Energy Department said. That would be enough to meet current U.S. oil demand for about five years and natural gas for a year and a half, but...

AMARILLO - Three Pantex employees remain on paid administrative leave for violating nuclear safety procedures after workers failed to keep a close lookout on a nuclear warhead for a few minutes last week, a top Pantex official said Wednesday. The incident violated long-standing "buddy system" rules aimed at preventing unauthorized access to nuclear weapons. B&W Pantex President and General Manager Dan Swaim said workers failed to keep proper visual surveillance of the warhead for less than eight minutes on Jan. 10. A fourth employee entered the area and discovered the violation, which was promptly corrected. The warhead remained under protective...

Over 200 of the leading climate scientists impelled government leaders to take radical measures to slow down global warming as "there is no time to lose." A petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night. The appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defying a threat of a presidential veto, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to push ahead with a $21 billion tax package, including repeal of tax breaks for major oil companies, as part of an energy bill, aides to the speaker said Tuesday. Democratic leaders circulated a summary of the legislation that includes the new taxes as well as a requirement for a 40 percent increase in automobile fuel efficiency, a huge increase in the use of ethanol as a motor fuel, and a mandate for utilities to use renewable fuels. Republicans earlier this year blocked Senate attempts...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 after four years of increases, the government said Wednesday ahead of a key United Nations meeting next week on climate change. The Department of Energy (DoE) said greenhouse gas emissions in the world's biggest polluter fell by 1.5 percent in 2006, the first decline since 2001. Measured against US economic growth of 2.9 percent last year, the department said greenhouse gas intensity fell by 4.2 percent, the largest yearly decline since 1990, its base year. President George W. Bush welcomed the DoE report as confirmation of his administration's...

Early U.S. Daylight Savings a bust in power savings Mon Apr 2, 2007 6:56PM EDT By Lisa Lee NEW YORK (Reuters) - The early onset of Daylight Savings Time in the United States this year may have been for naught. The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort. But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The United States is moving toward the regulation of carbon emissions, a U.S. energy official said Thursday, despite the Bush administration's adherence to a voluntary approach to controlling the primary gas blamed for climate change. "There will be carbon regulation of some sort," said Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Lab of the Department of Energy, told an international conference on biofuels. He spoke a week after briefing President Bush's global warming conference of major carbon-emitting nations. "I am neutral as to which kind of carbon management regulation there will be. It is very clear...

Rep. Duncan Hunter would slash funding for federal agencies that oversee environmental protection and workplace safety to "free up that heavy hand on free enterprise" and promote economic growth. Appearing on the public television show "TechnoPolitics," taped for broadcast this weekend, the El Cajon Republican called for substantial cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). "I think we're going to have to cut the budget of the EPA. I think we should cut 30 to 50 percent," Hunter said. "Government is an industry unto itself. . . . Agencies work to build...

Posters Note: The title sounds almost Nixonian, but Mr. Hunter has been a thorn in many bureaucratic sides for a long time, as this article reveals. Rep. Duncan Hunter was aware that the U.S. Department of Energy was unhappy with him. Little did he know how unhappy. As chairman of a House national security subcommittee, the El Cajon Republican has called for cutting the agency's budget. But he did not realize that had earned him a spot on what has become known as the Energy Department's "enemies list." Still, Hunter was not exactly surprised when another member of Congress recently...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Nevada can shut off water needed for bore hole drilling at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. In a strongly worded order focusing on federal "credibility and good faith," U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas said the Department of Energy could not ignore state limitations and continue using water for drilling test holes near the repository site. "This entire 'crisis' is self-imposed and self-created," Hunt said in his 24-page order, dated Friday but distributed among the parties on Tuesday. "The only argument the DOE makes is that...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

Maintenance Man Charged With Stealing Nuclear Secrets Posted: 11:31 AM Jul 19, 2007 Maintenance Man Charged With Stealing Nuclear Secrets Knoxville (WVLT) - A former Bechtel Jacobs maintenance man at an Energy Department facility in Oak Ridge has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of stealing materials used for uranium enrichment and then trying to sell it to a foreign power. Sixty-five-year-old Roy Lynn Oakley is accused of trying to sell national secrets from the East Tennessee Technology Park. But he is home with his wife after bonding out minutes after his arraignment and only hours after turning himself in...

The key Middle Eastern members of oil cartel OPEC are under pressure for an increase in production after a warning from Goldman Sachs that prices could hit a peak of $95 a barrel by the end of the year. Goldman Sachs said in a research note oil prices could reach $90 a barrel this autumn and $95 a barrel by the end of the year if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries does not ease production cuts that have helped tighten global markets. But OPEC says world oil demand next year will grow moderately while supply from rival producers...

Congressional leaders aren't finished scrutinizing Los Alamos National Laboratory over its security failures. Members of a powerful House committee have asked Congress' investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, to evaluate the feasibility of moving classified activities to other laboratories "where there is a better track record with respect to security." In a Feb. 16 letter to Comptroller General David Walker, House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders said repeated security problems have cast doubt on whether lab manager Los Alamos National Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration "are capable of assuring adequate safety, security, and sound business management practices." The...

WASHINGTON, July 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Energy has started an enforcement action against Los Alamos National Laboratory. The department and its National Nuclear Security Administration announced Friday they had started a "formal enforcement actions ... against the University of California and the Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the prior and current management and operating contractors of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico." The action was being taken "for violations of classified information security requirements under their respective contracts," the NNSA said in a statement. "Investigations revealed that management deficiencies of both contractors were a central...

DOE Provides up to $51.8 Million to Modernize the U.S. Electric Grid System Superconductor Research Crucial to Improving Power Delivery Equipment WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman today announced that DOE will provide up to $51.8 million for five cost-shared projects that will help accelerate much-needed modernization of our Nation’s electricity grid. This research will advance the development and application of high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to alleviate congestion on an electricity grid that is experiencing increased demand from consumers. Making investments to modernize our electricity grid; securing a diverse and stable supply...

What's going on at Los Alamos? The nation's premier nuclear-weapons laboratory appears plagued with continuing security problems. Barely 10 days after revelations of a leak of highly classified material over the Internet, NEWSWEEK has learned of two other security breaches. In late May, a Los Alamos staffer took his lab laptop with him on vacation to Ireland. A senior nuclear official familiar with the inner workings of Los Alamos—who would not be named talking about internal matters—says the laptop's hard drive contained "government documents of a sensitive nature." The laptop was also fitted with an encryption card advanced enough that...

Those recently foiled terrorist attacks aimed at Fort Dix and JFK Airport underscore the critical importance of monitoring homegrown “sleeper cells” within the United States. But they’re not the only internal threats to America’s homeland security. Judging by the headlines, it appears the federal government is itself a security problem. In response to criticism that it failed to “connect the dots” prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI unveiled a massive database last summer that contains information culled from its own files and those of other federal agencies, including the Treasury and Homeland Security departments. The bureau’s 12,000 agents...

An internal audit has discovered that twenty computers have disappeared from a critical counterintelligence agency tasked with protecting America's nuclear secrets. Fourteen of the computers contained classified material, marking yet another in a string of embarrassments for the Department of Energy: The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday. This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose...