December 7, 2020 | International, Naval
By DAVE RESS
DAILY PRESS |
DEC 04, 2020 AT 5:14 PM
Norfolk Naval Shipyard can proceed with plans to build a plant to supply the steam and most of the electricity it uses, the State Air Pollution Control Board ruled.
The board found that the new facility would not boost pollutants — including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide — above air-quality standards.
Its staff analyses also found increased emissions of those chemicals would not be significant, although the board staff did note that increases in very small particulate matter would be significant.
The shipyard wants to install two natural gas-powered turbines, each capable of generating 7 megawatts of electricity, as well as a boilers, heat-recovery generators and one 2.4 megwatt steam turbine.
The $30 million project would allow the yard to generate its own steam, instead of purchasing it from the nearby Wheelabrator plant. The plant also would supply most of the electricity the yard now receives from Dominion Energy.
James Boyd, president of the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP, said the project would add pollutants to the already bad air, raising serious environmental justice concerns.
In a letter to the board, he also said forecasts of emissions miscalculated totals, by reporting pollutant totals from one gas turbine and one burner from the steam generator, instead of calculating the total of all the turbines were operating.
University of Richmond geography professor Mary Finley-Brook noted that the shipyard is a Superfund site, which means its neighbors are more vulnerable to harm from emissions.
Finley-Brook said the assessment of impact on community health was inadequate.
A study for the board by two Massachusetts-based PhD toxicologists said air currently is safe and new plant would not change that, while board staff said air quality in the area had improved over the past 20 years.
Chesapeake Bay Foundation executive director Peggy Sanner said she is disappointed that the board did not require monitoring and reporting of actual emissions from the plant, once it is operating, in 2022.
“There are serious environmental justice concerns around building a new fossil fuel plant in this predominantly African-American community, which is overwhelmed by health risks from industrial pollution, she said, adding " Portsmouth residents already live near high concentrations of toxic waste at the nine Superfund sites within a 15-mile radius.”
September 18, 2024 | International, Aerospace
Designed for air, surface and maritime use, the ROVER 6S provides real-time, full-motion video and other data for situational awareness, surveillance, convey overwatch operations and other situations where eyes-on-target are...
May 16, 2023 | International, Aerospace
A former IT programmer now serving as a Ukrainian soldier says a four-rotor commercial drone which sells over the counter for $300 can be modified to carry explosives that will destroy Russian tanks.
May 22, 2020 | International, Security
Rome, May 21, 2020 - The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) will upgrade to Leonardo's latest Osprey radar to support missions such as search and rescue, border protection, fishery and pollution patrols. The Osprey 30 radar will be installed on-board the two customised Beechcraft King Air aircraft provided to the UK MCA by UK-based aviation services company 2Excel. Currently, the UK MCA is operating Leonardo's Seaspray 7300E radar, which has been employed to great effect in support of regular fishery and pollution patrols around the UK. The radar comes equipped with Leonardo's patented small target detection capability, allowing it to spot shipwrecked individuals in the water at long range, even in the most difficult environmental conditions and sea states. Additionally, the radar provides the ability for MCA crews to identify oil spills and rogue polluters at very long range, day or night. 2Excel will build on this success by equipping the MCA King Airs with Leonardo's second generation Osprey radar, the latest entry in its range of E-scan surveillance radars. Osprey benefits from all of the capabilities of the Company's Seaspray family whilst also adding additional modes and optimized overland and coastal imaging capabilities. This makes the radar ideally suited to mixed environment operations, such as along the coast. Traditionally, coastguard aircraft have used radars with restricted fields of view and limited detection capabilities, making searches laborious and resource-intensive. Leonardo's radars solve these problems. The Company is a world leader in E-scan, also known as AESA (Active Electronically-Scanned Array) technology, which uses a matrix of hundreds of tiny radar modules to ‘steer' an electronic beam, rather than mechanically moving the radar to point at a target. With a Leonardo E-Scan radar, crews can lift off, scan in 360 degrees and almost-instantaneously detect, track and classify hundreds of maritime contacts, allowing crews to quickly task cooperating aircraft to deeply search an area of interest. Other E-scan advantages include extremely high reliability, as the radar can continue to operate effectively throughout a mission even if a number of its individual radar modules fail. Customers in 30 countries have selected Leonardo's E-scan radars including the Seaspray and Osprey families, with the US Navy procuring the Osprey 30 radar for its Fire Scout unmanned helicopter programme. View source version on Leonardo: https://www.leonardocompany.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/21-05-2020-uk-maritime-and-coastguard-agency-to-get-latest-radar-technology-from-leonardo