Tidal energy continues to entice

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Tidal_energy_continues_to_entice_999.html Los Angeles (UPI) Nov 23, 2010 Tapping the Earth's ocean tides for affordable, renewable energy could ultimately meet 10 percent of America's electricity needs, advocates say. While widespread use may be years off, supporters say tides and other hydrokinetic systems, from ocean waves to free-flowing rivers, could eventually provide more electricity than hydropower dams now supply, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
Last month a company called Ocean Power Technologies connected a small test buoy in the swells off Oahu to the power grid that serves the Marine Corps Base Hawaii, a first for a wave energy device in U.S. waters.
"We have demonstrated that our technology works, that it can survive in harsh ocean conditions and can deliver high-quality power to the grid," Robert Lurie, a vice president of New Jersey-based Ocean Power, said.
Next year the company intends to anchor a larger power-generating buoy in the waves off Reedsport, Ore.
Their ultimate goal, Lurie said, is to build "multi-buoy wave farms" generating enough power to light 50,000 homes.
Tidal power projects or studies are being considered in Hawaii, Washington, Alaska, Florida, California, Oregon and Maine, in New York City's East River, along the Mississippi River and elsewhere.
"These are coastal resources, and most people live along the coasts," Hoyt Battey, a water power expert at the U.S. Energy Department, says. "When you're talking about providing half the power of Alaska or Hawaii, or half the power of New York, that's significant."

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Climate question & answer service ready for journalists’ questions

AGU Release No. 10–38
10 November 2010
For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON—Climate scientist-members of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) have organized a Climate Q&A Service to provide timely scientific answers to journalists reporting on climate.
Approximately 700 Ph.D.-level climate scientists, who represent the diversity of climate science-related disciplines, have volunteered to receive and respond to questions via a shared e-mail in-box. Teams of up to10 scientists at a time have signed up for shifts from Monday to Friday, 8AM–4PM (Pacific Time).
Scientist-volunteers in AGU's Climate Q&A Service will field questions about climate science (not policy) that are e-mailed to questions@agu.emailcenterpro.com, an e-mail box set up specifically for the project. Responses to questions will be returned in a timely fashion with regard for journalists' deadlines. Answers will reflect the responding scientists’ research and views. They do not represent official positions of the AGU, the world's largest organization of Earth and space scientists.
The service is an extended pilot project and will operate from today through at least the third week of January. This project is building off the success of last year's 10-day pilot program that coincided with the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Last year, 54 climate science inquiries were received from 27 media outlets, including Newsweek, National Public Radio, and the UK Sunday Times. This year's extended pilot will run for a significantly longer period and will seek increased visibility and use by journalists. AGU will collect data on requests and responses and solicit feedback from participants in order to evaluate the service.
If you have climate science questions, please e-mail them to questions@agu.emailcenterpro.com. For more information about the service, visit and bookmark the project's mobile-device-friendly website. From there, you can download a free widget for submitting questions to the service, which can be easily embedded on a web page.
AGU is a not-for-profit, professional, scientific organization with more than 58,000 members in over 135 countries. The organization advances the Earth and space sciences through its scholarly publications, conferences, and outreach programs. AGU is accessible on the Web. The Climate Q&A Service email box operates on a platform provided by Palo Alto Software of Eugene, Oregon.

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-38.shtml

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Obama reshapes administration for a fresh strategy

President Obama Said to Be Moving Toward Executive Action on Energy

New White House appointments were said to target enabling President Obama to achieve goals, including climate issues, by executive action, rather than through legislation, the Los Angeles Times reported. An administration official, who requested anonymity, was quoted as saying: "The ambition is to get a reasonable start" on regulatory changes.

The Times wrote: "One area of likely administration action is climate change. Legislation curbing emissions that cause global warming is stalled in Congress. Such efforts have a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next decade. The Obama administration does not think it can achieve the same reductions through regulation alone." However, added the Times, EPA "is determined to use its regulatory power under the Clean Air Act to begin lowering emissions, in the absence of congressional action."

Los Angeles Times, Oct. 6.

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U.S. Said to Have Major Surplus of Fissile Material

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010

The U.S. Energy Department is storing 324 metric tons of weapon-usable uranium even as President Barack Obama is calling for foreign countries to get rid of their own stockpiles of the fissile material, a government watchdog said in a report released today (see GSN, March 30).

The report from the Project on Government Oversight calls on the Obama administration to designate part of the highly enriched uranium stockpile as excess inventory and to ratchet up the amount of material being converted annually into low-enriched uranium fuel for nuclear power plants, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The HEU stockpile started to balloon in past years following implementation of several nuclear arms control treaties that required retirement of thousands of nuclear weapons. The United States ceased enriching uranium to bomb-grade levels when the Cold War ended.
The National Nuclear Security Administration -- the semiautonomous Energy Department agency with oversight over the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile -- stood behind its HEU conversion rate and pointed out the expense and complications associated with the effort. The agency did not disclose the specific size of the HEU stockpile.
The nuclear agency also claimed it was not sending conflicting signals by holding the surplus while urging other nations to eliminate or secure theirs. Nuclear installations in the United States are highly secure and NNSA officials offer their expertise to countries looking to surrender their own fissile materials, the agency said.
Still, nuclear watchdog groups and U.S. lawmakers are giving the issue greater attention.
"The U.S. would be on higher moral ground if we clearly articulated that we are working to minimize our use of highly enriched uranium," Nuclear Threat Initiative President Joan Rohlfing said. "It should be the norm that every country with these materials publishes their status."
"We are awash in surplus" HEU material, International Panel on Fissile Materials co-Chairman Frank von Hippel said. He, however, estimated the size of the U.S. surplus to be much smaller at 60 metric tons.
House Armed Services Committee staffers hope to learn more about the rate of HEU conversion during an upcoming trip to a $500 million uranium storage site in Tennessee, a GOP source said (Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 14).
[Editor's Note: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]

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