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The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $2.8 million to a coalition of partners who will research fuel management options for next-gen nuclear reactors. EPRI will lead the team, which also includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Southern Company and Deep Isolation. 

Two studies differ over how much nuclear waste would be a factor with small modular reactors, or SMRs, such as those planned by NuScale and TerraPower.

State and federal decarbonization policies, combined with efforts to electrify many end-use appliances, threaten the long-term competitiveness of natural gas local distribution companies, or LDCs, Moody’s Investors Service warned in a research note issued.

A large portion of the North American electric grid could face energy shortfalls in extreme weather conditions this winter, according to an assessment from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. The situation is “unprecedented,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment and system performance analysis, said in a call with media to discuss the report. “The system hasn’t been stressed in this manner in the past, and probably more importantly, it hasn’t been as widespread.”

When it comes to ensuring reliable service to customers, the most important assets an electric power provider has are its employees, who are working to keep the lights on every day. It is vital utilities invest in the skills and knowledge of their crews who are working out in the field to maintain and repair the electric grid. Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) has embodied this approach by building a new training and maintenance facility at its operations hub in York, Nebraska, U.S.

New aggressive planning is needed to identify the long-duration storage technologies and find the land to grow enough resources to reach Biden net zero emissions goals, a DOE national lab reports.

Xcel Energy announced a proposal to advance the retirement of coal operations at Tolk Generating Station in Texas to 2028, more than four years earlier than planned. With this earlier retirement, along with accelerated coal plant retirements in other states, the company will exit the use of coal by the end of 2030 when the Comanche 3 coal unit in Colorado retires.

A simple material can separate carbon dioxide from other gases that fly out of the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. It lacks the shortcomings that other proposed carbon filtration materials have, rivaling designer compounds in its simplicity, overall stability and ease of preparation.

A new method for describing energy loss in organic solar cells has paved the way for building better and more efficient devices. Organic solar cells are an emerging technology with a lot of promise. Unlike the ubiquitous silicon solar panel, they have the potential to be lightweight, flexible, and present a variety of colors, making them particularly attractive for urban or façade applications. However, continued advancements in device performance have been sluggish as researchers work to understand the fundamental processes underlying how organic solar cells operate.