Technology giants Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft filed a joint friend of the court brief in support of EPA’s Clean Power Plan, hoping to strengthen the agency’s position against legal challengers.
The companies said that they believe that the CPP “reflects reasonable and attainable assumptions about the increasing availability of renewable generation in the nation’s power sector.”
The case is expected to be heard in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in June.
More: 9to5Mac
Inspection Finds Broken Bolts At Entergy’s Indian Point Unit 2
More than a quarter of the bolts securing plates directing water around uranium fuel rods at Entergy’s Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor were found to be either broken, deformed or missing, according to a report released on March 29.
The March 7 inspection by Entergy found that 227 of the 832 bolts were either damaged or missing, a failure rate of 27.2%. The company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may order a similar inspection of Indian Point 3 to see if there is a similar bolt issue.
The missing fasteners are a concern because similar bolt damage was identified as the cause of a partial meltdown of the Fermi reactor in 1966.
More: The Huffington Post
FERC Delays Approval Of 2 Pa. Pipelines
FERC has delayed the timetable to review two proposed Marcellus Shale natural gas pipelines, pushing the potential approval dates into early 2017.
The Atlantic Sunrise project in Pennsylvania, a Williams Partners project, was seeking authorization from FERC by the end of April. The FERC schedule expects the review to be completed in January 2017. That pipeline is planned to run south from Susquehanna County to link up with an existing Transco pipeline in Lancaster County.
The PennEast Pipeline, a $1.2 billion 114-mile line that is to run from Northeastern Pennsylvania into New Jersey, sought approval from FERC by August of this year. But the FERC schedule shows the review won’t be completed until March 2017. PennEast is a UGI project.
More: Central Penn Business Journal
Bird Conservancy Group Targets 3 Wind Farms
The American Bird Conservancy says that three proposed wind projects near migration routes or important avian rookeries should not be built because they represent threats to endangered birds.
The conservancy said the turbines at two of the proposed wind farms, in North Dakota and in Kansas, are near migratory paths of the federally protected whooping crane. A proposed wind farm in northwest Missouri could threaten some of the migrating birds that use the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge, including snow geese, bald eagles and trumpeter and tundra swans.
“There’s plenty of data to suggest that plenty of birds are being struck by the blades on these turbines,” a conservancy spokesman said. “Hundreds of thousands at a minimum.” The conservancy said wind farms in such areas should probably be prohibited.
More: Midwest Energy News
41 Companies Volunteer To Cut Methane Emissions
EPA and 41 energy companies announced a partnership to voluntarily reduce methane emissions from natural gas operations at the Global Methane Forum in D.C. last week.
Called the Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge Program, the partnership is aimed at curbing methane emissions at wellheads and at various points along transportation systems.
The partners include Southern California Gas, whose gas storage well in California leaked thousands of tons of methane earlier this year. Other companies include Exelon, Duke Energy, TransCanada and Xcel Energy.
More: The Associated Press
Federal Weather Researchers See Record Ice Retreat in Arctic
NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center say the maximum ice buildup in the Arctic is coming in low this year. Ice growth for February was 1.16 million kilometers below average. And March’s reading, at 14.52 million square kilometers, was the lowest maximum extent on record.
This is the second straight winter that showed below-average maximum ice extents.
“Records attract attention, but the critical thing is, what’s the trend,” a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Polar Research Board. “This is just part of the overall trend of unraveling in the Arctic.”
More: The Washington Post
DOE Wants to Move 7 Tons Of Plutonium Cross Country
The Department of Energy is considering shipping nearly 7 tons of weapons-grade plutonium from the department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Las Cruces, N.M.
The plan is going forward despite the fact that the New Mexico plant has been closed since February 2014 due to a fire and unrelated radiation release there. The plutonium was to be de-weaponized at the South Carolina site, but now the department plans to dilute it to a level where it can be shipped. The New Mexico facility is more than 2,000 feet below ground.
“The importance of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists is clearer today than ever and is essential to protecting our nation and allies,” said the National Nuclear Security Administration.
More: Albuquerque Journal
FERC Staff: Reject Coaltrain ‘Rhetoric’
FERC staff told the commission Friday that a Pennsylvania-based power trading company’s response failed to dent their case that the company made riskless up-to-congestion transactions to collect line-loss payments. Staff asked the commission to uphold its findings and order the company to pay $42 million in penalties and unjust profits.
“Despite the rhetoric deployed throughout their lengthy submissions, the respondents do not credibly rebut the factual and legal conclusions in the staff report,” staff said in its response to Coaltrain Energy’s March 4 filing (IN16-4). The company’s answers to FERC’s Order to Show Cause contended it didn’t manipulate the market, that its trading strategy wasn’t deceptive and that it didn’t engage in wash trades or try to affect market prices.
As part of its response, staff included screenshots of one Coaltrain trader’s computer showing that he entered 137,800 MWh of “Over-Collected Losses” trades just three minutes after starting work on one day — evidence, staff said, that the trades were not based on “any meaningful research” but were intended to profit on the losses alone. Staff said Coaltrain also made misleading statements to PJM’s Independent Market Monitor in July and August 2010 in which it “falsely promised to stop making trades aimed at [collecting line-loss payments] after the IMM warned that trading to do so was illegitimate.”