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City Council gets: Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy Stockings filled with coal come by the Wyoming trainload to feed the furnaces powering CPS Energy's plants. But impending federal regulation of carbon emissions is causing utilities nationwide to wrestle with alternatives. CPS's position has been that natural-gas prices are too volatile. Solar's still too small. But does that imply nuclear is just right? San Antonio has been locked in stiff debate over that question this year. Local environmental and energy activists scored a key victory when they got language supporting the proposed doubling of the South Texas (Nuclear)Project stripped from CPS's May rate hike.

Residents and businesses in the Tampa Bay area soon will be paying a lot more for electricity. Customers of Tampa Electric Co. and Progress Energy will see a double-digit percentage increase in their electric bills beginning next year under plans approved this week by state regulators. The utilities say the increases are needed to cover higher costs for oil, natural gas and coal, which are used to generate electricity. For TECO customers, bills will rise about 12 percent. The cost of 1,000 kilowatt hours will jump from $114.38 now to $128.44 in January.

Facts about Exelon and NRG Energy. Exelon made an unsolicited $6.2 billion all-stock bid for NRG Energy. EXELON: _ Nation's top nuclear power operator with 17 reactors, representing approximately 20 percent of the U.S. nuclear industry's power capacity. _ Has 5.4 million election customers in northern Illinois and Pennsylvania. Also has 540,000 natural gas customers in the Philadelphia area. _ Reporting profit of $2.7 billion, or $4.06, from continuing operations on revenue of $18.9 billion in 2007. _ Based in Chicago.

When the House Natural Resources Committee voted in June to ban approval of new mining claims adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park, we commented that ore operations should undergo the same environmental scrutiny as is required for coal, oil and gas exploration projects. Since then Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who is certainly no friend of the environment, and his Bureau of Land Management have ignored Congress and continued to process mining claims near the canyon. Such contempt for the legislative process is offensive, particularly in this case.

Electric and natural gas utility SCANA Corp. spent $200,000 in the second quarter to lobby on nuclear energy funding and other issues, according to a recent disclosure report. Columbia-based SCANA also lobbied the federal government on legislation involving Energy Department loan guarantees, nuclear waste disposal, clean air, climate change, rail competition and fuel production tax credits.

On the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, next to two existing atomic power reactors and just down the road from a Liquified Natural Gas terminal, a company called UniStar Nuclear Energy LLC wants to build what would be the country's largest-and probably most expensive ever-nuclear power plant. Calvert Cliffs 3 would be a 1600 Megawatt behemoth, nearly the size of the two existing reactors combined. Its technology is French: a design by Areva called the Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR). UniStar itself is half-French; the company is 50% owned by Constellation Energy, based in Baltimore, and 50% owned by Electricite de France (EdF, which also owns several percent of Constellation itself). A growing player in the nuclear power field, UniStar isn't content with just one huge new nuclear project-its ambitions are to build, with various partners, at least four new EPR reactors in the U.S. over the next several years.

Entergy, Mississippi’s largest utility provider, is asking federal officials to allow it to build a new nuclear power plant, and ratepayers could be asked to help pay for it. Six weeks into his job as Entergy’s new president and chief executive officer, Haley Fisackerly says with rising energy prices â€" especially the high cost of natural gas â€" Entergy is proposing the construction of the first nuclear power plant in the Louisiana-Mississippi region in more than 30 years.

Twelve Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Energy and Support a Green Energy Future We have a complete set of energy solutions: solar cells, wind turbines, concentrating solar, ocean current and wave energy, energy efficiency, and the list goes on.(1) As these technologies mature, we can quickly reduce nuclear and coal usage and, in the future, cut oil and natural gas use. The most environmentally and economically destructive sources of electricity should be reduced now, as other technologies emerge. The phase-out of nuclear and coal energy will reduce global warming while freeing up monies for renewables and efficiencies.

America's twin crises of sky-rocketing energy costs and catastrophic climate change effects shouldn't be a convenient excuse to push nuclear power as a viable replacement for coal, oil and natural gas power-generating plants. The nuclear disaster at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and the near-disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 are reasons enough to strike nuclear power from the list of acceptable non-fossil and carbon energy sources. The nuclear power

Rising energy costs and concerns over carbon dioxide emissions have focused minds in Europe's utility sector. The response? A push to build more nuclear power plants that would reduce the amount of fuel (such as natural gas and coal) that's imported and cut CO2 just as governments start to take a hard-line stance towards greenhouse gases.

Is nuclear power the answer for a warming planet? Or is it too expensive and dangerous to satisfy future energy needs? Interest in nuclear power is heating up, as the hunt intensifies for "green" alternatives to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. Even some environmentalists have come on board, citing the severity of the global-warming threat to explain their embrace of the once-maligned power source.

America's twin crises of sky-rocketing energy costs and cat- astrophic climate change effects shouldn't be a convenient excuse to push nuclear power as a viable replacement for coal, oil and natural gas power-generating plants. The nuclear disaster at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and the near-disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 are reasons enough to strike nuclear power from the list of acceptable non-fossil and carbon energy sources.

America's twin crises of sky-rocketing energy costs and catastrophic climate change effects shouldn't be a convenient excuse to push nuclear power as a viable replacement for coal, oil and natural gas power-generating plants. The nuclear disaster at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and the near-disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 are reasons enough to strike nuclear power from the list of acceptable non-fossil and carbon energy sources.

MOSCOW, April 29 (UPI) -- A Russian survey suggests 41 percent of citizens support nuclear power. Nearly half of all Russians think there will be no alternative to nuclear energy if Russia eventually runs out of crude oil and natural gas, the survey results suggest. Eighteen percent favor the use of hydropower and 10 percent suggest coal, according to the Levada Center poll, the Daily News Bulletin reported.

Nuclear analyst Mycle Schneider noted in "Climate Change and Nuclear Power", published in April 2000 by the World Wide Fund for Nature, that countries and regions with a high reliance on nuclear power also tend to have high greenhouse gas emissions. Following is an extract from his findings.

Gov. Gary Herbert supports a full palette of energy options for Utah. The clean greens: solar, geothermal, wind. The dirty browns: coal, oil, natural gas. And the chameleon of electricity production, nuclear fission, which provides clean power but carries its own environmental and safety baggage. Nuclear power plants were popular until a near meltdown of a reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979 shocked the nation to its senses. There hasn't been a domestic plant built since. But in the rush to curb climate change, well-founded fears have been forgotten and a nuclear revival is underway. Nuclear power plants emit only water vapor and produce enough power to replace fossil fuels as a base-load provider of electricity. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received applications for 26 new reactors and more are expected, including paperwork for a proposed plant near Green River in Emery County, which would be Utah's first.

Concerns center on water usage, cost and spent fuel disposal. The future of San Antonio's ever-growing power needs was addressed Aug. 26 in McAllister Fine Arts Center during KSTX's Town Hall forum on energy. While the topic of the forum was all things energy, most of the evening's questions centered on CPS' proposed $10 billion-$13 billion expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear power plant in Bay City, which intends to add two additional nuclear reactors, as well as conversation on use of alternative and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Construction for the new reactors, dubbed STP 3 & 4, is slated to begin in 2012. CPS' use of renewable resources, including solar, wind and natural gas, equals over 11 percent of the city's peak energy demand, according to the company's Web site. The Web site also lists a goal to increase that percentage to 20 percent by 2020.

When the Wall Street Journal praises wind power for lowering electricity prices, you know we've reached a benchmark in renewable energy. A recent report from Bernstein Research, cited by a startled Journal blog post, concludes that in Texas, wind power may actually lower prices at certain times of day, by obviating the need to switch on costly natural-gas fired generators.

Nuclear power could help meet growing oilsands energy needs, but won't likely happen before 2025, a study released late Friday said. Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada, which looked at alternatives to natural gas in oilsands development, said nuclear energy still poses many challenges. Existing technology can't produce required pressurized steam for in-situ oilsands development, the study found, while high costs, a lack of commercial development or regulatory approvals would mean emerging options wouldn't be ready for nearly a decade.

The World Health Organization has slashed the safety limits of radon to a tenth of its current level, noting that the naturally occurring radioactive gas causes up to 14 percent of lung cancer cases. "In view of the latest scientific data, WHO proposes a reference level of 100 becquerels per metric cube to minimize health hazards due to indoor radon exposure," said the UN health agency in a report published this week. "However, if this level cannot be reached under the prevailing country-specific conditions, the chosen reference level should not exceed 300 becquerels per metric cube," it added. Becquerel is a measuring unit for radioactivity and reference levels represents the maximum accepted radon concentration in a residential dwelling. A previous WHO report published in 1996 had fixed the reference level at 1,000 becquerels per cubic metre. After smoking, radon is the second biggest cause of lung cancer, killing tens of thousands of people a year, said the WHO.