Written by Elizabeth Viselli Wednesday, 21 July 2010 14:10

ORONO — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced late Tuesday a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee’s initial approval of a $10 million appropriation to support University of Maine deepwater offshore wind energy research and development.  Collins, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, requested the funding. It was approved by the Subcommittee on Energy and Water.

“This is a critical step, and it is the result of Sen. Collins’ determination and her commitment to Maine,” says Prof. Habib Dagher, director of UMaine’s AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center and the lead researcher on this project.”  Collins has supported this work since the beginning, already having helped secure $25 million in federal funding as UMaine works toward developing and testing this technology. Plans call for the first 1/3 scale floating wind turbine to be deployed off Maine for testing in 2012. The additional funding will be used to build, deploy and test a full-scale prototype of a 5 megawatt floating wind turbine, using Maine companies and Maine labor.

“As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Collins has tremendous influence in the funding process and we all appreciate her tireless advocacy on behalf of this initiative,” Dagher adds.  Collins arranged for U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to visit UMaine in June, to learn first-hand about the pioneering efforts of Dagher and his colleagues. Shortly after his return to Washington, Chu announced plans to dedicate $20 million for deepwater offshore wind technology development. Collins has pledged to work toward assuring that “the lion’s share” of those funds are appropriated to UMaine.

A Tuesday news release from Collins’ office called this subcommittee’s action “the first step toward securing the full $20 million investment.” No funds have been included thus far in House counterpart legislation.  The State of Maine Ocean Energy Task Force has set a goal of developing 5,000 megawatts of deepwater offshore wind farms by 2030, equivalent to the energy production of three nuclear power plants. This development represents less than 3 percent of the 150,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity that exists within 50 nautical miles of Maine’s coast. These farms would be placed approximately 20 miles to 50 miles offshore where they would not be visible from land, and where Maine has some of the best and most consistent winds in the country. Such an effort could attract as much as $20 billion of private capital to Maine. The offshore wind industry builds on Maine’s maritime tradition, and could create throusands of jobs across the manufacturing, engineering, permitting, environmental, boatbuilding, construction, maintenance and composite materials sectors.

June 2009 Sea Technology Magazine. Tyco Telecommunications (Morristown, New Jersey) recently announced the successful demonstration of a 40 gigabit per second transmission over ultra-long haul distances. The test was conducted using dark fibers on the existing Tata Communications (Mumbai, India) TGN-Pacific submarine cable system that links Tokyo, Japan, to multiple U.S. West Coast city points of presence.

The data were carried from Toyohashi, Japan, to Los Angeles, California.

“We view this development as a significant milestone in the evolution of undersea cable transmission capability,” said Dr. Seymour Shapiro, vice president of research and development and chief technology officer of Tyco Telecommunications. “40G transmission is clearly the next standard for long-haul transmission, including undersea.”

In this field trial, a 40 gigabit per second signal was transmitted across two segments of Tata Communications’ TGN network for a total of 11,000 kilometers of undersea repeatered cable without regeneration. The path ran error-free over the entire three-day measurement period.

In a second experiment, a 40 gigabit per second data stream was looped back at the Los Angeles and Toyohashi terminals, so that the signal made four trips across the Pacific for a total transmission distance of 44,000 kilometers.

“The success of this field trial was made possible largely due to the top-notch support and cooperation by both the Tata Communications and Tyco Telecommunications teams and demonstrates that our TGN submarine cable network is capable of delivering native 40G transport,” said John Hayduk, chief technology officer of Tata Communications. “This can help us deliver another option to our customers, from both the service capability and the cost effectiveness points of view.”

“The deployment of 40G on undersea cable systems will be made possible by the confluence of 40G build-outs on terrestrial links and the availability of long-reach 40G transponders,” said William Marra, vice president and general manager of Tyco Telecommunications. “As higher bit rates become more prevalent in the terrestrial market, these services will naturally be required on undersea cables. Over the next year we expect to see 40 gigabits per second deployments starting with short ‘regional’ systems, which will be followed by transoceanic build-outs. This successful field trial illustrates how dedicated Tyco Telecommunications is to its existing customer base.” For more information, visit www.tycotelecom.com

SeaZone GeoTemporal Helps Monitor Port Development
SeaZone Solutions Ltd. (Hampshire, England) recently announced that its software is being used to monitor the impact of dredging activities taking place as part of a port development project in the U.K.

Selected by Titan Environmental Surveys (Glamorgan, Wales), SeaZone GeoTemporal has been used to manage raw data collected to form a baseline model and to analyze changes in water quality.

The software is helping the development company minimize disruption and control the environmental impact of their activities, Seazone said.

Titan was commissioned to undertake the collection of baseline monitoring data for the port development area, including wave, tide and current conditions; sediment levels; and other key water-quality parameters in relation to seasonal, tidal and nontidal contributing factors. The data were then used as benchmarks to evaluate additional measurements over the course of a full seasonal cycle.

“SeaZone GeoTemporal has helped us meet the project objectives in a timely and cost effective way,” said John Taylor, operations manager of oceanography at Titan. “The software allows data to be downloaded from the survey instruments at each monthly service interval, imported, quality controlled, analyzed and presented as data reports to the client with a rapid turnaround and consistent approach maintained throughout the duration of the project.” For more information, visit www.seazone.com

Mon, Dec. 22, 2008 Fort Worth Star Telegram By ADAM SCHRECK

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A robotic submarine searched beneath the Mediterranean on Sunday for damaged communications cables, two days after Web and telephone access was knocked out for much of the Middle East. Telecommunication providers from Cairo to Dubai continued Sunday to scramble to reroute voice and data traffic through potentially costly detours in Asia and North America after the lines running under the Mediterranean Sea were damaged Friday.

Internet access was largely knocked out for two days in at least six countries that were affected – Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Yemen.

It is the second time this year that trans-Mediterranean cables to Europe have been severed. The earlier cut, in late January, was apparently caused by a ship’s anchor.

A ship operated by France Telecom’s marine division arrived Sunday afternoon at what it believes is the accident site south of Sicily, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.

The crew released a robotic submarine named “Hector” to search for two of the three damaged cables, which are owned by a consortium that includes the Paris-based telecommunications giant. Once found, the cable ends will be pulled to the surface and repaired on deck – a process that could take several days.

“We have to fix the cable fiber by fiber, and it’s a very huge cable,” Aymard said. He said the company hopes to have the first line fixed by Thursday.

The third cable is operated by Reliance Globalcom. Officials at that company could not be reached for comment.

Regional communication providers’ efforts to redirect voice and data traffic brought some areas back online over the weekend. Still, rolling outages continued to plague large parts of the region.

Emirati provider Etisalat said Internet service remained at about 85 percent capacity Sunday. The Abu Dhabi-based company was redirecting some of its data traffic through South Asia, spokesman Saeed al-Badi said.

Dubai-based Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Co., better known as Du, said it was sending data and international voice traffic through Asia and the western United States.

“Due to the diversion of all traffic … eastbound … customers may be experiencing slower Internet access time than usual. This is the same for all Internet traffic from the region and is likely to continue until the cables are repaired,” the company said.

The Egyptian government said about 80 percent of Internet services had been restored as of Sunday. Access was knocked out Friday and much of Saturday. Connection speeds were down in Yemen and in Jordan. There were no major outages in Lebanon but some users experienced spotty access.

Dubai-based airline Emirates, one of the Middle East’s most visible companies, said it had to cope with a 30 percent slowdown in online booking times and initially faced telephone problems.

The national oil spill commission is looking to the nuclear power industry as a model in developing some of its recommendations of how the oil industry and government agencies should move forward after the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf, commission co-chairman Sen. Bob Graham said Tuesday.

Graham, in an interview Tuesday, pointed to the nuclear industry’s creation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations in the aftermath of the 1979 near-meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor as the kind of action the oil industry should take.

A similarly independent Kemeny Commission, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, conducted an investigation into the nuclear industry’s handling of safety issues after the March 1979 accident near Hershey, Pa., and recommended that the industry establish a program to develop appropriate safety standards for management, quality assurance, and operating procedures and practices.

The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations was quickly formed, and also conducts independent evaluations of power plants and the utilities that operate them.

The Kemeny Commission also recommended a systematic gathering, review and analysis of operating experience at all nuclear plants, and the establishment of an international communications network to help pass on relevant information about plant operations. INPO fills that role as well.

‘Very instructive’

“What we are learning from the nuclear power industry … was very instructive for the deepwater drilling industry and has similar applications to other industries which are developing their technology to produce at a rate that is rapidly outstripping their ability to safely manage that technology and respond to accidents,” Graham said.

One key difference that Graham recognized is that no new nuclear power plant has been authorized for construction since the Three Mile Island accident, which provided the industry with a lengthy period to improve its safety record.

“Now we’re into what’s referred to as the nuclear renaissance,” Graham said, referring to recent decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider licensing new reactors, including one proposed for construction by Entergy Nuclear at the utility’s existing River Bend nuclear station near Baton Rouge and another proposed at Entergy’s Grand Gulf nuclear station in Port Gibson, Miss.

“What the industry did was recognize that the lowest-performing entity in their group was going to set the public standard for the whole group,” Graham said.

Through establishment of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, “they set best practices, and they aggressively monitor those best practices, and the safety record of the nuclear industry in the last 30 years has been significantly better than it had been,” he said.

Federal regulation was restructured

The industry effort was matched by a restructuring of federal regulation of nuclear plants. The Atomic Energy Commission had been tasked with both regulation and promotion of nuclear power, similar to the roles played by the Minerals Management Service before the Deepwater Horizon accident.

Congress created a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission to handle regulation, and assigned other promotional roles to the Department of Energy. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reconstituted the Minerals Management Service into three separate divisions, Office of Natural Resources Revenue, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, all under the new moniker of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

Graham and commissioner Terry Garcia, a senior executive at National Geographic magazine and former assistant secretary of the Commerce Department, said their final report, due in mid-January, will focus on such safety management issues,

The report also will focus on whether federal law now allows or needs to be changed to allow federal officials to direct toward implementation of the state’s coastal restoration master plan a large share of the billions of dollars BP may owe to mitigate natural resource damages or in fines for violation of environmental regulations.

Graham suggested that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, appointed by President Barack Obama to develop an oil spill recovery plan for the Gulf Coast, is thinking in the same direction.

Long-term financing

“I don’t want to infringe on the private conversation we had with Secretary Mabus, but I think that’s going to be a significant part of his report,” Graham said, when asked if either report would recommend ways of financing the state’s long-term coastal restoration efforts. “I think not only the quantity of resources, but the reliability of those resources. If you’re in a project like this that’s going to take 30 or 40 years for completion, you can’t go along for five years and have the spigot turned off.

“We in fact had that happen in the Everglades, and it was very damaging,” Graham said, referring to the 20-year effort to restore the Florida “river of grass” to environmental health. “So ideally, if you could get a source of financing that didn’t require congressional appropriations, that was some form of a trust fund that could be accessed with confidence over an extended period of time, that would be the preferable form of financing.”

A spokeswoman for Mabus would not say whether the recovery plan will include such a recommendation for long-term coastal restoration financing.

“Sorry, I’m not at liberty to discuss the secretary’s private conversations,” said Navy Capt. Beci Brenton. “The secretary will make his recommendations in his report to the president in a few weeks.”

Graham also had some advice for state officials who have been repeatedly critical of the Army Corps of Engineers’ leadership of coastal restoration projects, after hearing their concerns over dinner with state officials leading the program Monday night.

Surprised at corps reputation

“Frankly, I was surprised at how searing their criticism of the corps of engineers was as being more of a barrier than a launching pad to coastal protection,” Graham said. “I might say I was a little surprised, because I’ve spent a lot of my life working on Everglades restoration, which is another complicated topic and in the last 25 years, the corps office under which we work, which is in Jacksonville, has had a cultural transition and has become much more progressive and affirmative in supporting things like restoration.

Graham said that was likely in part the result of the luck of the draw in the appointment of a series of officers to three-year district commander appointments in Jacksonville “who were looking to find ‘yes’ answers, rather than ‘no’ for an answer.”

He suggested that state officials should lobby the Obama administration for the replacement of corps officers in both the New Orleans District and Vicksburg division headquarters offices that they feel are obstructing implementation of the state’s restoration plan.

NOLA.com