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'Old school’ energy sector struggling to fill jobs

The U.S. energy industry is short on workers as hefty salaries fail to draw enough new talent. The labor crunch has slowed the pace of new drilling and refining projects and added to already escalating costs, and industry experts fear the shortage could linger as young people continue to avoid the “old school” industry. For some positions, particularly skilled trades, companies often pick off employees from each other with higher salary offers, experts said. Adding to the problem is the industry’s aging workforce. The majority of U.S. energy workers will be eligible to retire by 2017, according to a 2007 study by the U.S. National Petroleum Council. “The smart students that are going into engineering are going into cutting-edge fields,” said the incoming president-elect of the National Society of Professional Engineers. Skilled trades, such as welders and electricians, are also in short supply, as high school graduates are steered away from vocational training, said the head of North American energy consulting at AT Kearney. U.S. firms are also facing growing competition from other countries for skilled workers at all levels. U.S. workers now often go abroad for higher pay.

Details Here: ww.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/calgarybusiness/story.html?id=73d0b066- f5b6-425d-838c-afc9849a6f43

first published week of:   05/05/2008

NERC: Southern California faces summer power challenge

Southern California’s electricity system will be challenged this summer, and power emergencies may result if an extended drought leads to massive wildfires, the main U.S. electricity reliability watchdog said on Wednesday. Southern California is the area that most concerns analysts at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), which on Wednesday issued its summer 2008 outlook. Of southern California, NERC said, “capacity margins will remain tight. Significant amounts of imported power are required to fortify capacity margins and preserve reliability, resulting in heavily loaded transmission lines into this area during peak conditions.” “As a result, unplanned major transmission or generation outages, or extreme temperatures/demand may lead to resource constraints.” NERC said voluntary conservation and on-call interruptible loads will likely be necessary more often than usual this summer.

Details Here: www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1451329920080514

first published week of:   05/19/2008

Nevada files challenge against federal nuclear dump licens

Nevada officials say they have filed the first challenge against a Bush administration bid to win U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval for a national nuclear waste dump outside Las Vegas. The state attorney general calls the massive 8,646-page license request submitted Tuesday for the Yucca Mountain project “legally deficient” and incomplete. The state says the document lacks a key U.S. Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard against which the repository design is supposed to be measured. The state attorney general says the application also does not contain a final design and is missing crucial information about transportation and storage canisters. She says the NRC should refuse to docket the Yucca Mountain license application “until key components are available for review.”

Details Here: www.ktnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8431931

first published week of:   06/16/2008

New manual on terrorism prevention

Interpol, Europol, the World Customs Organization, and the International Atomic Energy Agency have produced a reference manual that details how to prevent, detect, and respond to nuclear terrorism. Combating Illicit Trafficking in Nuclear and Other Radioactive Material has been written for law enforcement, intelligence, emergency workers, and the nuclear industry. It advises on existing national and international anti-nuclear terror laws, policies, and actions; the existing threat posed by illicit use of nuclear materials; information on radiation health risks and nuclear transports; and advice on the detection of potential nuclear terror threats. It also calls for better coordination and harmonization of procedures between agencies and government departments which deal with possible nuclear terror threats.

Details Here: www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=132&storyCode=2048805

first published week of:   02/25/2008

New ways to store solar energy for nighttime and cloudy days

The solar power industry is finding ways to capture the sun’s heat so that demand for electricity can be met whenever the sun is not shining. Ausra, a Palo Alto, California-based company is making components for plants to which thermal storage could be added, if the cost were justified by higher prices after sunset or for production that could be realistically promised even if the weather forecast was iffy. Ausra uses Fresnel lenses, which have a short focal length but focus light intensely, to heat miles of black-painted pipe with a fluid inside. SolarReserve plans a slightly different technique. It is a “power tower,” a little bit like a water tank on stilts surrounded by hundreds of mirrors that tilt on two axes, one to follow the sun across the sky in the course of the day and the other in the course of the year. In the tower and in a tank below are tens of thousands of gallons of molten salt that can be heated to very high temperatures and not reach high pressure. A manager at Black & Veatch said that with a molten salt design, “your turbine is totally buffered from the vagaries of the sun.” A tower design could also allow for operation at higher latitudes or places with less sun. Designers could simply put in bigger fields of mirrors, proponents say. A small start-up, eSolar, is pursuing that design.

Details Here: www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/earth/15sola.html?_r=1&ref=business&ore f=slogin

first published week of:   04/21/2008

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Volume 31

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