Free Republic

BERLIN - An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year. The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid. The two firms said the concept of “SchwarmStrom” (literally, “swarm power”) would allow Germany to abandon nuclear and coal power stations sooner and help compensate for the volatility of renewables like wind and solar...

NEW HAVEN — SNIPPET: "Thompson was charged over the weekend with the June 6 carjacking at Church and Chapel streets and is under investigation for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail over the fence at the Yale power plant at 18 Tower Parkway June 7. He told Detective Wayne Bullock that Allah instructed him how to “melt down” the plant, according to documents filed in court Monday. It didn’t cause any damage." SNIPPET: "Police recovered the stolen Nissan Sentra. After Thompson’s confession, bomb technicians spent hours in a wooded grove near the Kimberly Avenue bridge after he claimed he had buried...

Officers swooped on environmental protesters as they prepared a mass raid that could have disrupted supplies to tens of thousands of homes. The demonstrators are thought to have gathered at night in readiness to move on Ratcliffe-on-Soar power-station, Nottinghamshire. They were rounded up shortly after midnight on Sunday at the Bakersfield Community Centre in Sneinton, Notts, by scores of officers. Detectives later revealed they recovered specialist equipment that suggested the group represented a "serious threat" to the station's safety. Supt Mike Manley, of the Nottinghamshire force, said 114 men and women from across the UK were detained during the dramatic...

According to the linked page: "Unnamed freelance journalist has the goods on Obama and Rezko"

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Kenya will pave the way for increased cooperation between the two countries, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Sheikholeslam said on Friday in Nairobi. In a meeting with Kenyan Vice President Stephene Kalonzo Musyoka, he stated that there has been substantial improvement in Tehran-Nairobi relations. Iranian companies are currently implementing road and power plant projects in Kenya and are interested in expanding their activities in the East African nation, Sheikholeslam said. He also expressed appreciation for the Kenyan president's invitation to Ahmadinejad. The Kenyan vice president stated that Nairobi is committed to supporting the Islamic Republic...

Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale. The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store. Though the California installations will generate...

CARLSBAD – The developer of a proposed power plant in Carlsbad plans to float a familiar idea to provide water for its generators: desalinate ocean water. NRG Energy has applied to the California Energy Commission to build a 540-megawatt power plant west of Interstate 5 on the south shore of Agua Hedionda Lagoon. The new plant would be on NRG's 95-acre ocean-view property, where it owns and operates the 965-megawatt Encina Power Station. That power plant is best known for its 400-foot-tall smokestack, visible for miles. The new plant would replace three of Encina's five steam-driven turbines, so the old...

WASHINGTON – The amount of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, released by the nation's power plants grew by nearly 3 percent last year, the largest annual increase in nearly a decade, an environmental group said Tuesday. The analysis of government emissions figures covered more than 1,000 plants including those burning coal, natural gas and oil. The report by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that the 2.9 percent increase in CO2 releases outpaced a 2.3 percent year-to-year increase in electricity production. “Carbon emissions actually increased faster than (electricity) demand,” said Eric Schaeffer, the group's executive director....

Reassurance about the public's safety is coming from the U-S Nuclear Regulatory Commission following word of the release of a small amount of radiation when the Oyster Creek Nuclear power plant in Ocean County was shut down this week. N-R-C spokesman Neil Sheehan says a Senior Health Physicist was on hand at the time the reactor was being vented releasing a weak radioisotopeTritium. He says "the Physicist looked at the plant's data on what was emitted and is very confident that this didn't represent any sort of threat to members of the public." Oyster Creek's parent company AmerGen, a subsidiary...

Sacramento -- A bill that sought to lift California's three-decade ban on building new nuclear power plants died Monday in a Democrat-controlled legislative committee. It was clear that the legislation would get a chilly reception in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee when the chairwoman abruptly interrupted a presentation by the bill's author, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine (Orange County), and asked him to finish his opening remarks. "You've spoken for five minutes ... and I'm wondering if you can wrap up," said Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley. The committee voted 3 to 6 along party lines. As his main argument for the...

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea has opened the world's largest garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by 500,000 barrels a year as a result. The 50-megawatt plant, designed to provide power to more than 180,000 households, began operating on Tuesday. It sits on a mammoth garbage dump in the city of Incheon west of Seoul, the ministry said in a statement. For fuel, it uses only the methane gas naturally generated from the decomposing garbage on the site. "It reduces greenhouse gas emissions by burning away methane and avoids buring more fossil fuel for...

An engineer at a nuclear power plant near Sacramento has been charged with sending threatening letters containing a powdery substance to the same Sierra foothills country club where President Bush will appear Tuesday for a Republican campaign event. Michael Lee Braun, 51, appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on two federal charges of sending threats through the mail. The FBI said he also is a suspect in mailing dozens of similar threats since shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The charges relate to two letters prosecutors said Braun mailed on Thursday to the Serrano Country Club and Serrano...

California has approved 18 power plants to be built in the next few years, but only two are under construction and will cover only half of the expected growth in peak energy demand state officials are predicting by 2008. Five years after the state's power crisis, anxiety over insufficient supply stems from a more cautious power market in which generators want to be sure they can sell the energy they produce before spending billions on new plants. Energy experts warned that the record-setting heat wave alone should not spur a power plant boom. The two plants being built will add...

WARSAW, July 19 (Reuters) - New conservative Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Wednesday Poland should consider developing nuclear power plants in an effort to diversify from its dominant coal-fired producers. "Maybe we should start thinking about nuclear power. Hysteria around these energy sources is fading... we should consider steps in this direction," Kaczynski told parliament in his first policy speech. Currently more than 90 percent of the country's electricity is produced by coal-fired plants.

RAINIER, Ore. -- Demolition crews on Sunday destroyed the 499-foot cooling tower at a defunct commercial nuclear power plant. With a rumble, the tower leaned to the side and collapsed upon itself - leaving a cloud of dust and multi-ton pile of rubble. It took less than 10 seconds and roughly 2,800 pounds of explosives to complete. Portland General Electric ordered the implosion at Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, about 40 miles north of Portland, as part of its decommissioning. Trojan closed in 1993 for financial and safety reasons, and the facility has been decommissioned in stages since then. It was...

A suspected terrorist accused of conspiring to assassinate President Bush said he proposed the plot but it wasn't pursued, and he was frustrated that other members of his al-Qaida cell lacked initiative, according to prosecutors. A government motion unsealed this week by a federal judge reveals new details in the case against Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24, who is scheduled to go on trial next month. Prosecutors say the Falls Church resident has admitted joining al- Qaida while attending college in Saudi Arabia and that he discussed numerous terrorist plots, including plans to assassinate Bush and hijack airplanes. Abu Ali...

Two men suspected of Islamic terrorist links arrested this week in Spain were arrested near a nuclear-powered electricity-generating plant, authorities said. Officials in the central region of Guadalajara said on 30 September that a police patrol stopped and briefly questioned Moroccan Mohamed El Ouazzani and Moroccan-born Khalid Zeimi Pardo close to the Zorita nuclear power plant. The men were asked for their papers at the time, and after it was confirmed that they were in the country legally and had no criminal records, were let go. Ouazzani and Zeimi Pardo were among five men arrested Tuesday in three Spanish cities...

A Cass County Circuit Court judge told Aquila Inc. on Friday that it must immediately stop operating its Cass County power plant. Judge Joseph Dandurand set a May 31 deadline for the company to either get regulatory approval to resume operating the plant or start tearing it down. He also ordered Kansas City-based Aquila (NYSE: ILA) to immediately post a $20 million bond regarding the plant. "I have nothing but frustration with the position taken by Aquila," Dandurand said. He referred to Aquila's decision to build the plant in the face of his January 2005 injunction as a show of...

ANKARA - The Turkish government will announce by the end of January a decision to build between three and five nuclear power plants with a total 5,000 megawatts capacity, sources close to the government said yesterday. The government may ask the electricity distribution companies to buy 7-10 percent of the energy produced in nuclear power plants, the sources said. “There will be no Treasury guarantee in this model, but the energy sector itself will provide the guarantee,” an official said. Turkey hopes nuclear power will help cover a projected energy shortage in the future, but its efforts on two other...

<p>A Japanese corporation wants to thrust the Interior community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years.</p> <p>There's a catch, of course. It's a nuclear reactor.</p>

/begin my translation6-party talk: Light-water Reactor Issue, "Light-water reactor can serve as a deterrent" (N. Korean argument) Mainichi Shimbun, 2005/09/16, morning edition[Sato Jiyako from Beijing] A source from Japanese delegation to 6-party talks said at night of Sept. 15 that N. Korea explained their reason for insisting on having light-water reactor(s), saying 'the reactor(s) can serve as deterrent against attacks from other countries' because such an attack on a reactor could create radioactive contamination./end my translation

MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin regulators acted properly in granting permits for a coal-fired power plant outside Milwaukee, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in rejecting a challenge by environmentalists and the state of Illinois. Environmentalists seeking to stop the $2.15 billion project argued the Public Service Commission did not do a complete review of the Wisconsin Energy proposal and failed to study whether cleaner-burning natural gas was a viable alternative to coal. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan also intervened in the lawsuit, saying Lake Michigan and the states around it would be exposed to toxic mercury emissions and other pollution....

WASHINGTON - Efforts since the Clinton administration to clean up the nation's biggest industrial source of air pollution reached what may be a legal dead end Wednesday. A federal appeals court ruled that power plants can throw more pollutants into the air annually when they modernize to operate for longer hours. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Duke Energy Corp. didn't need the Environmental Protection Agency's permission when it made improvements between 1988 and 2000 at eight power plants in North Carolina and South Carolina. While the modifications would allow the plants to operate more hours and,...

In legal papers filed with the state Supreme Court, environmentalists have accused California energy regulators of violating state law by approving an expansion of the El Segundo power plant without requiring operators to study the potential harm to marine life. Santa Monica Baykeeper and Heal the Bay alleged in the filing last week that the California Energy Commission went against state recommendations to study the effects of large water pipes that suck in and destroy trillions of marine organisms every year. El Segundo plant operators plan to increase the amount of Santa Monica Bay seawater pulled in by 25%, for...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration planned to issue the nation's first regulations to cut mercury pollution from electric utilities Tuesday, relying on a market trading system that gives companies 15 years to reduce it nearly by half. The Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites)'s regulations are aimed at reducing levels of a toxic chemical that can severely damage nervous systems, especially in fetuses and children. They result from a lawsuit brought by an environmental group 13 years ago. The EPA expects to reduce the current 48 tons a year of mercury from smokestacks of coal-burning power plants down to...

Many Others Ready to Abscond: Pathetic Conditions Revealed at Chinese-aided CHASNUPP Power PlantNine Nuclear Scientists Slip Out of PakistanSpecial SAT ReportKARACHI: At least nine senior Pakistani Nuclear Scientists have secretly absconded from Pakistan, the latest defection taking place as late as in July 2002, documents from Pakistan's nuclear power plant CHASNUPP, built with Chinese assistance at Chashma in central Pakistan, have revealed.Eight of the nine absconders were "Senior Engineers" at CHASNUPP and one was an Assistant Engineer. Four of them belonged to the Operations Division of the power plant, two to the Mechanical Maintenance Division and one each to Electrical,...

PORT DARLINGTON, Ont. (CP) - Explosions that sent debris into the air "like rockets" and a blaze at what was believed to be a propane company forced the evacuation of about 5,000 people late Tuesday, police said. The fire near the waterfront in the community east of Toronto could be seen for miles and the explosions rocked homes in the area. "I opened the blinds and there was this explosion, at least eight or nine storeys into the sky of light and fire," a woman named Heather reported. "Then we just started hearing the explosions of the propane tanks every...

WISCASSET, Maine (AP) - The most visible symbol of Maine's nuclear power past - the massive domed containment building at the defunct Maine Yankee plant - will be eliminated from the landscape with a big boom this week. Explosives will bring down the reinforced concrete structure Friday, the first time explosives have been used to knock down a commercial reactor containment building, said Justin Manafort, of Manafort Bros, which is overseeing the decommissioning. "Other reactors have been taken down but none of this size or magnitude. The majority are done conventionally with cranes and torch cutting. We chose to use...

Massive coal-fired power plant to come up in Anhui It will produce more electricity than Three Gorges Dam BEIJING - China, grappling with a widening power crunch, is planning a giant coal-fired power project that will generate more electricity than even the massive Three Gorges Dam, an industry official said. Huaneng Group, the parent of Huaneng Power International, aims to build the giant thermal plant with China Power Investment Corp and Huainan Mining Group, said Mr Pu Hongjiu, vice-director of the China National Coal Association. The project, to be built in the eastern province of Anhui, is expected to have...

/begin my translationIsrael To Bomb A Iran's Nuclear Power Plant Israel informed U.S. that, in order to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, she plans to bomb Busheher Nuclear Power Plant, under construction in Iran, if Russian-supplied fuel rods are put into its reactor(s.) The fuel rods are now at a Russian port, which are to be shipped in the first half of next year. 24 years ago, Israel's squadron of (F-15's and) F-16's bombed Iraq's Osirak Reactor which was being constructed using French technology, stopping Iraq's nuclear weapon's program on its track. /end my translation

NYC police on watch for Port courthouse bomber By Andy Smith and Stephanie Akin Staff writers New York City police are targeting a man who bombed Newburyport Superior Court 28 years ago, saying he poses a threat to next week's Republican National Convention. But an anti-war activist group has accused police of trying to "smear" their reputation by linking the group with the convicted radical who terrorized New England with a series of bombings in the 1970s. New York City police say Richard J. Picariello, 55, is among 50 activists whose criminal histories will earn them extra attention next week....

Tuesday, June 29, 6:03 p.m. By Bob Reynolds, Terror Scare in Luzerne County State and federal investigators surrounded a van not far from the nuclear power plant near Berwick Tuesday. It happened after a group of five men asked for directions to the plant, saying they wanted to go fishing. At a time the whole nation is on high alert, the terror scare hit close to home. Five men, four from Bangladesh and one from Pakistan were pulled over on Route 11 around 11:00 Tuesday morning. All the men live in New York City. Police wanted to know if they...

Power Plant Shut -- to Tune Piano OSLO (Reuters) - One of the Nordic region's biggest power stations shut Friday to let an expert tune a grand piano for a concert undisturbed by the hum of huge hydroelectric generators. "When you put a big piano in there, you also need to tune it, and that is very difficult if the machines are running," said Tron Engebrethsen, senior vice president at Norwegian power company Statkraft. The generators will be switched back on after Friday evening's concert which is being staged in an enormous underground hall at the 1,120-megawatt Sima power plant....

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. NEW YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - Two separate groups of companies have formed recently with an eye toward applying for licenses that could allow the first new U.S. nuclear power plant to be built in more than 25 years. The two consortiums intend to work with the U.S. Department of Energy to test a new process from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for obtaining a license for an advanced nuclear power reactor. There is no plan at this time to actually build a new nuclear reactor, members of both groups emphasized....

AUSTIN, Texas -- Five Austin police officers have been disciplined for going fishing while they were supposed to be protecting a power plant against possible terrorism. The Austin American-Statesman obtained memos showing the officers were suspended last month for fishing while on duty at a power plant on Lake Walter E. Long. The newspaper said a lieutenant and a sergeant were among those suspended for one to 30 days. A sixth officer -- a sergeant -- was suspended for not reporting the others. Details on his suspension weren't available because he's appealing his punishment. The report says the officers were...

<p>Three men caught with camera equipment on the grounds surrounding the nuclear power plant were arrested and interrogated by federal and local authorities.</p> <p>The trio, who police say came to the United States as teenagers from Iran, were spotted at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station Saturday morning walking along a restricted beach near the plant. They were arrested on trespassing charges. The men told authorities they were hiking.</p>

<p>Sacramento's electric utility won state approval Tuesday for the biggest power plant it has built since the Rancho Seco nuclear generating station.</p> <p>The construction project, to go up beside the skeleton of the long-closed nuclear plant, will begin once federal permits are issued, possibly next month.</p>

<p>Israel has ready a plan to bomb Iran's Bushehr nuclear-power plant should the Persian Gulf coast facility, now under construction, begin producing weapons-grade material, an insider tells us.</p> <p>This source says Israel has mapped out a route its jet fighters would take to destroy what is designed to be a two-reactor plant. A successful strike would ensure that the radical Tehran regime does not develop nuclear weapons. Iran has tested 600-mile-range ballistic missiles that can reach Israel and carry nuclear, biological or chemical warheads.</p>

When an overheating electrical transmission line sagged into a tree just outside Cleveland at 3:32 p.m. on Aug. 14, the events that would lead to the greatest power failure in North American history began their furious avalanche, according to the most extensive analysis of the blackout yet. The failure of that transmission line was crucial, because it put enormous strain on other lines in Ohio. Soon a utility that serves southern Ohio, with its overloaded lines close to burning up, sealed itself off, creating in very real terms an electrical barrier between the southern part of the state and the...

NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCILPrinceton Forrestal Village116-390 Village BoulevardPrinceton, New Jersey 08540-5731 August 14, 2003 Power Outages – Announcement Starting at about 4:15 PM EDT, major losses of electric load occurred in the northeastern U.S. and Canada in the Eastern Interconnection.No cause is known at present, but the outages do not appear to be the result of a terrorist attack.The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New York City, northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do not know if these blackouts are related for sure, but it is likely.Con Edison in New York lost...

Hannity station went dead for about 20 seconds. Said he had never seen anything like it.

Neighbors of Alameda County site complain of garbage, no tax benefit By Matt Carter, STAFF WRITER To engineers and accountants, eastern Alameda County looked like a pretty good place to build a natural gas-fired power plant. The area is sparsely inhabited, and there's ready access to water, natural gas lines and the state's electrical grid. That helps explain why Calpine Corp. and Florida-based FPL Energy filed separate applications two years ago with the California Energy Commission to build 1,100 megawatt generating plants between Livermore and Tracy. One megawatt is enough generating capacity to supply 750 to 1,000 homes. If built,...

April 30 — The FBI is warning law enforcement officials around the country to be on the lookout for potential terrorist activity around nuclear power plants. In its weekly intelligence bulletin to 18,000 police agencies, the FBI says law enforcers should be on the lookout for any suspicious activity around the power plants, including people photographing the facilities and small planes flying in the area. Nuclear plants "are a vulnerability target which could have certain consequences" if attacked, one official said. The bulletin does not mention a specific threat. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has...

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, April 17, 2003; Page A01 BAGHDAD, April 16 -- At 8 p.m. on April 3, as U.S. tanks rumbled into Baghdad's international airport to prepare for a final attack, the power went out across this sprawling city. Perhaps the Americans had bombed a power plant, people here figured, or President Saddam Hussein had ordered everything shut down. Either way, they assumed, once the government fell and U.S. forces asserted control here, the lights and the air conditioning would be on again. That never happened. Although it has been a week since U.S....

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Apr 17, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- With the system lights around him glowing a sickly green, the chief engineer of Baghdad's key power plant stood Thursday before a control panel of bad news: Inverter failure. Cooling system failure. Circuit breaker failure. "Red. They should be red," Janan Behnam said of the lights, beacons in the battle to restore Iraq's capital to normalcy and power up the city of 5 million. Baghdad remained in a two-week-old power outage Thursday, giving looters a cover of darkness and leaving families across the capital short on sleep as they...

<p>A Pakistani man who pleaded guilty to being an illegal immigrant in possession of firearms was ordered deported Wednesday, six months after he was arrested by federal agents investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.</p> <p>Prosecutors have said they have no evidence linking Raza Nasir Khan, 30, to terrorism, but that when FBI agents questioned him after the attacks, they discovered he had overstayed his work visa.</p>

A federal judge in Wilmington has ordered an illegal Pakistani immigrant to be held without bail. But U. S. Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thynge says there is no proof Raza Khan is involved in any terrorist activities. His attorney did admit that his client did overstay his visa and was wrongly in possession of firearms as an illegal alien. Khan was arrested Monday after he had requested maps of a hunting area near a nuclear power plant.

Thursday October 18 11:54 PM ET Pakistani Pleads Not Guilty in Delaware Arms Case By Rita Farrell WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - A Pakistani man with an expired visa pleaded not guilty in federal court in Delaware on Thursday to illegal possession of firearms, charges for which he has been imprisoned for nearly a month. His roommate and fellow Pakistani, Syed Hassan, 23, told Reuters that Raza Nasir Khan was arrested on Sept. 25 because of the hijack attacks on New York and Washington two weeks earlier. ``This is because of Raza's skin color and his goatee. He looks more like ...

<p>Coal-burning utilities will not need to install more pollution controls when they expand.</p> <p>WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency will relax air pollution rules to make it easier for utilities to upgrade and expand their coal-burning power plants, Bush administration sources said late Wednesday.</p>