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ADAGE and Energy Northwest announced a partnership today that could bring several new power plants to the Pacific Northwest by the end of 2012. The plants would be built by ADAGE, a joint venture by AREVA and Duke Energy, and would bring an estimated 2,000 construction jobs to the state. ADAGE President Reed Wills said at a press conference announcing the partnership that the plants also would create 500 permanent "green" jobs for plant operations and wood waste collection. The plants likely would be located in forested areas of western Washington. AREVA President Jacques Besnainou said the plants would burn wood waste, such as bark or tree branches stripped from lumber, to generate power. Wood waste is a renewable, carbon-neutral source that fits the state's clean energy goals, he said.

Energy utility Exelon Corp. spent nearly $1.2 million in the second quarter to lobby on tax credits for renewable energy sources and other issues, according to a recent disclosure report. The Senate on Tuesday passed a broad tax package providing more than $17 billion in renewable energy tax incentives that the solar and wind industries say are crucial if they are to become significant energy sources in the near future. But the legislation faces obstacles in the House, where three separate bills are on the schedule Wednesday.

SELLAFIELD HAS the world's biggest stockpile of plutonium and uranium and storage tanks contain highly volatile radioactive waste "more dangerous" than the Chernobyl reactor, according to a study published today. The study, Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance, also says the British government is now unlikely to meet its 1998 commitment under the Ospar Convention to reduce "close to zero" Sellafield's radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea by 2020.

While the arguments rage on both sides, the experts say that time is running out For the workers at Oldbury-on-Severn nuclear power plant, the next new year celebrations could be rather poignant. Just as Britain is planning the rebirth of nuclear power generation, their ageing plant will be closing down, probably on December 31. Oldbury, in Gloucestershire, has been pouring power into the national grid since 1967 and is the latest in a series of closures that has seen Britain's nuclear generating capacity fall from nearly 40% of the nation's needs in the 1980s to just 15% now. Most of the slack has been taken up by new gas-fired stations.