Tuesday, Dec 23rd
Last update07:59:57 AM GMT
Energy Glance
The senior federal regulator leading the inspection of a troubled nuclear reactor near Omaha is the target of a complaint to Congress over his handling of the reactor's problems.
A letter on Nuclear Regulatory Commission letterhead alleges that Troy Pruett pushed staff to downplay problems at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station and created a “corrosive environment.”
Presenting technology as completely safe, trustworthy or miraculous may seem to be a thing of the past, but the parallels between the Titanic and Japan's nuclear power industry could not be clearer. Japan's nuclear power plants were, like the Titanic, advertised as marvels of modern science that were completely safe. Certain technologies, whether they promise to float a luxury liner or provide clean energy, can never be made entirely safe.
Austrian and Japanese researchers on Wednesday unveiled solar cells thinner than a thread of spider silk that are flexible enough to be wrapped around a single human hair.
“You could attach the device to your clothes like a badge to collect electricity (from the sun)… Elderly people who might want to wear sensors to monitor their health would not need to carry around batteries,” Sekitani told AFP.
The boss of British Gas owner Centrica scooped a £10million package last year despite plunging millions of families into misery with inflation-busting hikes in bills.
Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, received a windfall large enough to pay the average family’s energy bill for the next 7,500 years.
During 2011, Mr Laidlaw received heating discounts worth almost £700 from Centrica – more than half the average family bill.
A former paramilitary has testified before a U.S. court that coal giant Drummond Ltd. paid paramilitaries $1.5 million to murder union leaders, Colombian media reported Tuesday.
Alcides Mattos Tabares, alias "El Samario," claimed to have taken part in the murder of employees that Drummond ordered the Northern Bloc of the AUC paramilitary group to carry out over several years.
Drummond's union president and vice president, Valmore Locarno and Victor Hugo Orcasita, "had" to be killed because they were organizing a strike that would have generated losses for the company, said Tabares.
At least 24,000 people, holding torches, formed an 80-kilometer long human chain in areas near Braunschweig in Germany, which has decided to abandon nuclear power plants by the end of 2022, according to an organizer. The chain encircled three nuclear facilities including a temporary storage site for nuclear waste in the vicinity of the city.
Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest -- built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced -- are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the region's electricity grid says there's an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.
"It's the one system in the world where in real time, moment to moment, you have to produce as much energy as is being consumed," BPA spokesman Doug Johnson said of the renewable energy.
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