Power Plants

WASHINGTON - Taking aim at the gases that the vast majority of scientists say are the main contributor to climate change, the Obama administration proposed rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, a move that could essentially bar new coal-fired electric generation facilities. Tuesday's announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency signaled the administration's willingness to weigh in on politically sensitive environmental issues, even if its decisions court controversy in an election year.

California's energy grid operator announced that two mothballed generators at a natural-gas-powered plant on the Huntington Beach coastline are back in service, a critical piece of the plan to replace power from the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant this summer. San Onofre has been shut down for three months because of equipment issues, and it's unclear when it will return to operation. Officials have expressed concern that in the event of a heat wave or transmission outage, parts of Los Angeles County, south Orange County and San Diego County could face power shortages over the summer without the plant's 2,200 megawatts of energy.

Smog and soot levels have dropped significantly in Southern California over the last decade, but the Los Angeles region still has the highest levels of ozone nationwide, violating federal health standards an average of 137 days a year. The city ranks second in the country, behind Bakersfield, for the highest year-round levels of toxic particles or soot, and fourth in the nation for the number of short-term spikes in soot pollution. The rankings, part of the annual "State of the Air" report by the American Lung Assn., are based on federal and state data, which show that more than 90% of Californians live in counties with unhealthful air. Unlike parts of the East and Midwest, where coal-fired power plants are a primary source of toxic pollution, Southern California's chemical stew is the product of tailpipe emissions from cars and diesel pollution from trucks, trains and ships linked to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Southern California Edison announced Friday that it will collaborate with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on seismic studies looking at offshore faults near the San Onofre nuclear plant, beginning later this year. Edison requested approval last year from the California Public Utilities Commission to recover $64 million from ratepayers for seismic studies that will help to determine the future of the plant. Caroline McAndrews, Edison's director of nuclear strategic projects, said the collaboration with Scripps will account for about half of that.

The Obama administration announced long-awaited rules that would sharply limit the output of carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, the gases that the vast majority of scientists say are the primary contributor to global climate change. The announcement Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency signaled that the administration's commitment to tackling climate change has not entirely fallen away, despite the controversy it could unleash in an election year. Delays of key EPA rules over the last six months and President Obama's recent statements touting oil development in response to high gasoline prices stirred nervousness among environmentalists that this standard would also be shelved.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said over the weekend that Japan had "distributed 230,000 units of stable iodine to evacuation centres" near the Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini nuclear power plants. Damage to those plants from Friday's earthquake and tsunami has increased the risk that people in the area could be exposed to radiation.  If that happens, here's why taking iodine tablets might help.   In this fact sheet , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explain that the body needs iodine -- in a nonradioactive form -- to make thyroid hormones, which regulate metabolism.

As reported on the Los Angeles Times Politics Now blog, the Obama administration on Tuesday announced stringent rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. Most climate scientists say that carbon dioxide is the principal gas responsible for global warming. As pointed out in the story by Neela Banerjee, supporters of emissions standards were surprised and pleased to find the administration pushing forward with these new rules, after some indications lately that the president and his administration might pull back from aggressive new environmental protections during an election year.

Flames flickered from a metal trash can as a U.S. soldier shoved maps and other papers into the fire. A front loader carried an outhouse down a dirt lane marked N. Hellcat Road. It was handoff day at Iskan, a U.S. military base on the grounds of Iraq's largest power plant. Its troubled past, imperfect present and foggy future mirror the country as a whole as U.S. forces pull out of bases and turn them over to the Iraqis, even as recent suicide bombings have renewed fears of instability.

A devastating explosion destroyed a Connecticut power plant Sunday morning as workers cleared a natural gas piping system, killing at least five and injuring many more, emergency response officers said. Homeowners miles away said the 11 a.m. blast at the Kleen Energy Systems power plant in Middletown created a shock wave that some people mistook for an earthquake or some other act of nature. "I felt the house shake. I thought a tree fell on the house," Middletown resident Steve Clark told the Associated Press.

Scuba diver John Vincent sensed something was wrong when, fishing for lobster one night off Playa del Rey, he felt a strange current. It grew stronger. Seconds later, Vincent, 49, was swept into the mouth of a huge intake pipe for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Scattergood power plant. He tried to kick against the flow, but it was no use: Down the pipe he went, clutching his flashlight and his limit of lobsters, a long, fast journey through the dark. "I was flipping out," he said.

The American public is divided about whether to eliminate federal subsidies for any form of energy and is giving less support to nuclear power and U.S. funding of renewable energy, a new poll has found. Fifty-four percent of respondents opposed doing away with subsidies for oil, gas, coal, nuclear or renewable energy, while 47% favored the idea. Support for building more nuclear power plants has fallen dramatically, to 42% from 61% in 2008. The Yale-George Mason University poll being released Thursday found that 76% of Americans support regulating carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas pollutant and that two-thirds believe the U.S. should pursue policies to reduce its carbon footprint.

The extended closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant due to safety concerns has led some to speculate — or hope — that the plant will be shuttered for good, but the chief nuclear officer for plant operator Southern California Edison said he doesn't believe the problems signal the plant's demise. "There's nothing I'm aware of today that would make me conclude that," Southern California Edison Senior Vice President Pete Dietrich said in a telephone interview Monday, speaking to The Times for the first time since the plant was forced to close.

California's initiative process can be both a wonderfully democratic and perilously dumb way to make law. On no issue could that be more true than the proposed initiative to shut down nuclear power in the state. The initiative would shut down the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre nuclear plants until the federal government approves a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste. The issue is scientifically, environmentally and economically complex, and tangled with powerful emotions. Between the facts and those feelings, guess which will have more influence on the choice people make?

In an election year, any progress on environmental regulation is cause for celebration. So when the Obama administration on Tuesday released its long-delayed proposal to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, there was reason for anyone concerned about public health or the looming climate menace to cheer - even though it won't shut down a single existing coal-fired plant. Power plants are the nation's biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions. These gases reflect heat back toward the Earth rather than letting it escape into space; as a result, global average temperatures have risen by about 1 degree since 1880, according to NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and carbon emissions are expected to drive increasingly rapid warming.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing serious concerns about equipment failures at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, has prohibited Southern California Edison from restarting the plant until the problems are thoroughly understood and fixed. The plant has been shut down for two months, the longest in San Onofre's history, after a tube leak in one of the plant's steam generators released a small amount of radioactive steam. Since then, unusual wear has been found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water.

The Obama administration announced long-awaited rules that would sharply limit the output of carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, the gases that the vast majority of scientists say are the primary contributor to global climate change. The announcement Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency signaled that the administration's commitment to tackling climate change has not entirely fallen away, despite the controversy it could unleash in an election year. Delays of key EPA rules over the last six months and President Obama's recent statements touting oil development in response to high gasoline prices stirred nervousness among environmentalists that this standard would also be shelved.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a timetable Thursday to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from two major sources of the pollution scientists link to global warming: power plants and oil refineries. The announcement was the latest step in an ambitious effort to begin taking action on climate change, and it is certain to draw fire from congressional Republicans and industry leaders who have promised to halt the agency's efforts. The new move toward far-reaching emissions rules comes as environmentalists had begun to worry that the Obama administration was easing its push in order to avoid confrontations with major industries in advance of the 2012 presidential campaign.

As reported on the Los Angeles Times Politics Now blog, the Obama administration on Tuesday announced stringent rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. Most climate scientists say that carbon dioxide is the principal gas responsible for global warming. As pointed out in the story by Neela Banerjee, supporters of emissions standards were surprised and pleased to find the administration pushing forward with these new rules, after some indications lately that the president and his administration might pull back from aggressive new environmental protections during an election year.