Elwood V. Jensen, Pioneer in Breast Cancer Treatment, Dies at 92

Tony Jones/Cincinnati Enquirer, via Associated Press

Elwood V. Jensen in 2004.

Elwood V. Jensen, a medical researcher whose studies of steroid hormones led to new treatments for breast cancer that have been credited with saving or extending hundreds of thousands of lives, died on Dec. 16 in Cincinnati. He was 92.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son, Thomas Jensen, said.

In 2004 Dr. Jensen received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, one of the most respected science prizes in the world.

When Dr. Jensen started his research at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, steroid hormones, which alter the functioning of cells, were thought to interact with cells through a series of chemical reactions involving enzymes.

However, Dr. Jensen used radioactive tracers to show that steroid hormones actually affect cells by binding to a specific receptor protein inside them. He first focused on the steroid hormone estrogen.

By 1968, Dr. Jensen had developed a test for the presence of estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells. He later concluded that such receptors were present in about a third of those cells.

Breast cancers that are estrogen positive, meaning they have receptors for the hormone, can be treated with medications like Tamoxifen or with other methods of inhibiting estrogen in a patient’s system, like removal of the ovaries. Women with receptor-rich breast cancers often go into remission when estrogen is blocked or removed.

By the mid-1980s, a test developed by Dr. Jensen and a colleague at the University of Chicago, Dr. Geoffrey Greene, could be used to determine the extent of estrogen receptors in breast and other cancers. That test became a standard part of care for breast cancer patients.

Scientists like Dr. Pierre Chambon and Dr. Ronald M. Evans, who shared the 2004 Lasker prize with Dr. Jensen, went on to show that many types of receptors exist. The receptors are crucial components of the cell’s control system and transmit signals in an array of vital functions, from the development of organs in the womb to the control of fat cells and the regulation of cholesterol.

Dr. Jensen’s work also led to the development of drugs that can enhance or inhibit the effects of hormones. Such drugs are used to treat prostate and other cancers.

Elwood Vernon Jensen was born in Fargo, N.D., on Jan. 13, 1920, to Eli and Vera Morris Jensen. He majored in chemistry at what was then Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, and had begun graduate training in organic chemistry at the University of Chicago when World War II began.

Dr. Jensen wanted to join the Army Air Forces, but his poor vision kept him from becoming a pilot. During the war he synthesized poison gases at the University of Chicago, exposure to which twice put him in the hospital. His work on toxic chemicals, he said, inspired him to pursue biology and medicine.

Dr. Jensen studied steroid hormone chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology on a Guggenheim Fellowship after the war. While there, he climbed the Matterhorn, one of the highest peaks in the Alps, even though he had no mountaineering experience. He often equated his successful research to the novel approach taken by Edward Whymper, the first mountaineer to reach the Matterhorn’s summit. Mr. Whymper went against conventional wisdom and scaled the mountain’s Swiss face, after twice failing to reach the summit on the Italian side.

Dr. Jensen joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of surgery in 1947, working closely with the Nobel laureate Charles Huggins. He became an original member of the research team at the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research (now the Ben May Department for Cancer Research) in 1951, and became the director after Dr. Huggins stepped down.

He came to work at the University of Cincinnati in 2002, and continued to do research there until last year.

His first wife, the former Mary Collette, died in 1982. In addition to his son, Dr. Jensen is survived by his second wife, the former Hiltrud Herborg; a daughter, Karen C. Jensen; a sister, Margaret Brennan; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Dr. Jensen’s wife was found to have breast cancer in 2005. She had the tumor removed, he said in an interview, but tested positive for the estrogen receptor and was successfully treated with a medication that prevents estrogen synthesis.

Read More..

French Council Strikes Down 75% Tax Rate on Rich

PARIS — France’s Constitutional Council on Saturday struck down the Socialist government’s plan to impose a 75 percent marginal income tax rate on the wealthy, a measure that figured prominently among the campaign promises of President François Hollande and that had become a divisive emblem of his approach to cutting the budget deficit.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault quickly pledged that the government would reintroduce a revised version of the tax for next year to address the criticisms of the Constitutional Council, which ruled that the measure did not tax affected households equally.

The 75 percent rate was always a symbolic political gesture, as Mr. Hollande himself has acknowledged. It was to expire in two years and would have applied only to annual income above 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million, and so would have affected no more than a few thousand taxpayers.

Tax revenues from the measure would have reached just a few hundred million dollars, little more than a bucket of water in France’s deficit sea; the budget deficit is about $112 billion this year.

The council ruled that the tax was unfair because it would have applied unevenly to different households with the same combined income. A couple making a combined 1.5 million euros a year, for instance, would be exempt from the tax so long as both partners earned less than 1 million euros individually. If one partner earned more than 1 million euros, however, the couple would have been required to pay the 75 percent rate on their combined earnings of more than 1 million.

Mr. Hollande introduced the tax during his presidential campaign — a sharp break from his center-right rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who had established a tax ceiling of 50 percent of earnings — to prove his leftist credentials in the face of a challenge from a candidate supported by the Communists, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Among the opposition on the right, politicians said the 75 percent rate was tantamount to theft, calling it “confiscatory” and insisting that it would drive investors and entrepreneurs out of the country. There have been reports and rumors of as many as 5,000 wealthy French citizens moving out of the country, though there are no official figures.

Most recently, in what has grown into a minor national scandal, it was revealed that the actor Gérard Depardieu would be taking up residence in Belgium, where there is no wealth tax and where the maximum income tax rate is 50 percent.

In France, without the 75 percent tax rate, the highest income tax rate will now be 45 percent. (With the invalidation of the 75 percent rate, French Twitter users have implored Mr. Depardieu to return to France, some facetiously, some not.) The 45 percent rate, which will apply to income above 150,000 euros, or about $198,000, is itself an increase from the previous top rate of 41 percent.

The Constitutional Council approved the increase in its ruling Saturday, along with several general elements of the government’s planned budget for next year: an increase in tax withholdings, the taxing of capital gains at the same rates as income tax and a rise in the wealth tax rates.

It invalidated a proposed 75 percent tax on complementary retirement pensions, however, calling it “confiscatory.” The council reduced the rate to 68 percent.

Mr. Hollande has committed to cutting France’s budget deficit, which stood at 4.5 percent of gross domestic product this year, to 3 percent next year. But he has emphasized tax increases rather than spending cuts. To meet the target, Parliament this month approved a spending freeze that would save about $13 billion, along with $26 billion in additional tax revenues — including those meant to come from the 75 percent rate — for the 2013 budget. But the budget was drawn up on the basis of the government’s growth estimate of 0.8 percent, a number viewed by many economists in France and elsewhere as unrealistically high.

Read More..

Army Corps of Engineers clear-cuts lush habitat in Valley

An area that just a week ago was lush habitat on the Sepulveda Basin's wild side, home to one of the most diverse bird populations in Southern California, has been reduced to dirt and broken limbs — by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Audubon Society members stumbled upon the barren landscape last weekend during their annual Christmas bird count. Now, they are calling for an investigation into the loss of about 43 acres of cottonwood and willow groves, undergrowth and marshes that had maintained a rich inventory of mammals, reptiles and 250 species of birds.

Much of the area's vegetation had been planted in the 1980s, part of an Army Corps project that turned that portion of the Los Angeles River flood plain into a designated wildlife preserve.

Tramping through the mud Friday, botanist Ellen Zunino — who was among hundreds of volunteers who planted willows, coyote brush, mule fat and elderberry trees in the area — was engulfed by anger, sadness and disbelief.

"I'm heartbroken. I was so proud of our work," the 66-year-old said, taking a deep breath. "I don't see any of the usual signs of preparation for a job like this, such as marked trees or colored flags," Zunino added. "It seems haphazard and mean-spirited, almost as though someone was taking revenge on the habitat."

In 2010, the preserve had been reclassified as a "vegetation management area" — with a new five-year mission of replacing trees and shrubs with native grasses to improve access for Army Corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime in an area plagued by sex-for-drugs encampments.

The Army Corps declared that an environmental impact report on the effort was not necessary because it would not significantly disturb wildlife and habitat.

By Friday, however, nearly all of the vegetation — native and non-native — had been removed. Decomposed granite trails, signs, stone structures and other improvements bought and installed with public money had been plowed under.

In an interview, Army Corps Deputy District Cmdr. Alexander Deraney acknowledged that "somehow, we did not clearly communicate" to environmentalists and community groups the revised plan for the area 17 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. He added that the corps would "make the process more transparent in the future."

But Kris Ohlenkamp, conservation chairman of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, asserted that the corps had misrepresented its intent all along.

Walking Friday through what once had been a migratory stop for some of the rarest birds in the state — scissor-tailed flycatchers, yellow-billed cuckoos, least Bell's vireos, rose-breasted grosbeaks — Ohlenkamp said: "We knew that the corps had a new vision for this area, but we never thought it would ever come to this."

Frequent catastrophic floods prompted civic leaders in the 1930s to transform the river into a flood-control channel. Nearly the entire 51-mile river bottom was sheathed in concrete, except in a few spots such as the Sepulveda Basin.

Over the decades, awareness of the river's recreational potential grew. And with pressure from environmental groups, Los Angeles County and corps officials in the 1980s made major changes. The waterway and surrounding flood plain were slowly transformed into a greenbelt of parks, trees and bike paths, courtesy of bond measures approved by voters.

Then in 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency deemed the entire river to be navigable and therefore subject to protections under of the Clean Water Act.

A year ago, Army Corps of Engineers District Cmdr. Col. Mark Toy issued a license allowing the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to operate a paddle-boat program in the Sepulveda Basin, along a 1.5-mile stretch of river shaded by trees teeming with herons, egrets and cormorants.

This summer, paying customers will disembark a hundred yards from the corps' recent clear-cuts.

"Environmental stewardship is critical for us," Deraney said. "But assuring public safety and access to infrastructure designed to deal with flooding are paramount."

As he spoke, a Cooper's hawk swooped down and landed on a nearby tree stump.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

Read More..

Stahl arrested for investigation of lewd conduct

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police say actor Nick Stahl has been arrested for investigation of lewd conduct.

The 33-year-old “Terminator 3″ star was arrested about 8 p.m. Thursday on Hollywood Boulevard. He was booked on a misdemeanor count of lewd conduct and released from custody.

The Los Angeles Times reports (http://lat.ms/YU6uBO) that Stahl was arrested at an adult movie shop during a routine undercover police operation.

In May, Stahl had been reported missing by his wife, but he later turned up.

Stahl was a child star who performed in the 1993 film “The Man Without a Face.” He also has appeared in the 2003-2005 HBO series “Carnivale’” and starred in “Mirrors 2″ in 2010. An email seeking comment from his publicist was not immediately returned Friday.

___

Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Stahl arrested for investigation of lewd conduct
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Senate Leaders Set to Work on a Last-Minute Tax Agreement

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

In a televised statement at the White House after meeting with Congressional leaders on Friday, President Obama said he was “modestly optimistic” that an agreement could be reached.

WASHINGTON — At the urging of President Obama, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate set to work Friday night to assemble a last-minute tax deal that could pass both chambers of Congress and avert large tax increases and budget cuts next year, or at least stop the worst of the economic punch from landing beginning Jan. 1.

After weeks of fruitless negotiations between the president and Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama turned to Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader — two men who have been fighting for dominance of the Senate for years — to find a solution. The speaker, once seen as the linchpin for any agreement, essentially ceded final control to the Senate and said the House would act on whatever the Senate could produce.

“The hour for immediate action is here. It is now,” Mr. Obama said in the White House briefing room after an hourlong meeting with the two Senate leaders, Mr. Boehner and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. He added, “The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy, not right now.”

Senate Democrats want Mr. McConnell to propose an alternative to Mr. Obama’s final offer and present it to them in time for a compromise bill to reach the Senate floor on Monday and be sent to the House. Absent a bipartisan deal, Mr. Reid said Friday night that he would accede to the president’s request to put to a vote on Monday Mr. Obama’s plan to extend tax cuts for all income below $250,000 a year and to renew expiring unemployment compensation for as many as two million people, essentially daring Republicans to block it and allow taxes to rise for most Americans.

Bipartisan agreement still hinged on the Senate leaders finding an income level above which taxes will rise on Jan. 1, most likely higher than Mr. Obama’s level of $250,000. Quiet negotiations between Senate and White House officials were already drifting up toward around $400,000 before Friday’s White House meeting. The two sides were also apart on where to set taxes on inherited estates.

But senators broke from a long huddle on the Senate floor with Mr. McConnell on Friday night to say they were more optimistic that a deal was within reach. Mr. McConnell, White House aides and Mr. Reid were to continue talks on Saturday, aiming for a breakthrough as soon as Sunday.

“We’re working with the White House, and hopefully we’ll come up with something we can recommend to our respective caucuses,” said Mr. McConnell, who has played a central role in cutting similar bipartisan deals in the past.

The emerging path to a possible resolution, at least on Friday, appeared to mirror the end of the protracted stalemate over the payroll tax last year. In that conflict, House Republicans refused to go along with a short-term extension of the cut, but Mr. McConnell reached an agreement that permitted such a measure to get through the Senate, and the House speaker essentially forced members to accept it from afar, after they had left forChristmas recess.

This time, the consequences are more significant, with more than a half-trillion dollars in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts just days from going into force, an event most economists warn would send the economy back into recession if not quickly mitigated. With the House set to return to the Capitol on Sunday night, Mr. Boehner has said he would place any Senate bill before his chamber and let the vote proceed and the chips fall. The House could also change the legislation and return it to the Senate.

If the Senate is able to produce a bill that is largely bipartisan, there is a strong belief among House Republicans that the same measure would easily pass the House, with a large number of Republicans. While Mr. Boehner was unable to muster enough votes for his alternative bill that would have protected tax cuts for income under $1 million, that was because the measure lacked Democratic support, and was roughly a few dozen votes shy of passage with Republicans alone.

Helene Cooper and Ron Nixon contributed reporting.

Read More..

Russian ban on U.S. adoptions meant to cast Americans as abusers

Anyone unfamiliar with the hyperbole of post-Cold War politics might be perplexed by Moscow’s move to outlaw American adoption of Russian orphans.

More than 60,000 Russian children once condemned to a hellish institutional life have been brought into U.S. homes over the last two decades, most of them suffering disabilities that would have gone untreated had they been left in the Dickensian orphanages of their homeland. The disabled remain victims of stigma in Russia, while a struggling economy and the Stalin-era brand of orphans being “children of the enemies of the people” continue to dissuade Russians from adopting their own unfortunates.

But Russians’ inability and unwillingness to take care of their legions of unwanted children is nevertheless the source of deep embarrassment and wounded national pride, Russia experts say. And having Americans swooping in and rescuing them by the thousands each year nurtures an inferiority complex that has only deepened since the superpower rivalry purportedly ended with the Soviet Union's 1991 breakup.

Nationalist lawmakers in the State Duma overwhelmingly approved the U.S. adoption ban last week, and the upper house of the legislature passed it unanimously on Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin signed the law Friday, and it will take effect on New Year’s Day.

Putin’s parliamentary allies pushed through the ban by conjuring up an image of American adoptive parents as sinister hunters of transplant organs, child sex slaves and sacrificial soldiers for foreign aggressions, perhaps even against Russia.

Like most good lies, the sickening picture of American motives painted to get the adoption ban passed was built on a morsel of truth. The measure was named the Dima Yakovlev Act, in memory of the Russian-born toddler who died of heatstroke in 2008 when his American adoptive father left him locked in a car for hours.

Dima was one of 19 Russian-born children to die from accidents or neglect after being brought to the United States over a span of more than 15 years, according to the Moscow-based advocacy group Right of the Child. The agency, which opposed the U.S. adoption ban, reports that at least 1,200 accidental or abuse deaths occurred over that same time among children adopted by Russian families.

Russia has about 740,000 children in state care, UNICEF reports, and the United States is the most frequent destination for foreign adoptions, taking in about 3,000 on average each year. Fewer than 7,000 are adopted by Russian families each year, or less than 1% of those dependent on state care, Right of the Child Director Boris Altshuler has calculated.

The U.S. adoption cutoff is widely seen as retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, a bill President Obama signed into law two weeks ago that sanctions Russian officials for alleged human rights abuses. The bill was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after being arrested and beaten for blowing the whistle on $230 million in tax graft by Russian police.

Putin bridles at any U.S. allegation of abuse by Russian officials and believes moves to punish his government are part of an elaborate scheme to undermine and dominate Russia, said Steven Fish, a political science professor and Russian expert at UC Berkeley.

The adoption ban is “an asymmetrical move ... and is very much a product of this prickly wounded nationalism,” Fish said. “These kids are now just going to be caught in a system that already can’t take care of them.”

Adoption has always been a sensitive issue in Russia, he said, because having to depend on American largess to provide adequate care for orphans casts the country and its leadership as "weak and poor.”

Letting a few thousand young Russians leave for new lives with U.S. families each year also plays into the nationalist hysteria over Russia’s demographic crisis, Fish added. He blamed rampant alcoholism for Russian men’s persistently low life expectancy as a far larger  contributing factor to the annual population shrinkage of 150,000.

Paul Gregory, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, said  Putin’s followers have churned up public animosity toward U.S. adoptions by resurrecting the Soviet-era propaganda tactic of casting the United States as a dangerous and depraved nation.

“Clearly they want to say that if we’re cracking down on their rights abuses that it’s even worse in the United States. They come up with rather ridiculous cases of cross burnings, and bombings of Jewish synagogues and civil rights abuses to prove that the Magnitsky death in prison was nothing bad at all compared to what goes on here,”  Gregory said. “What they fail to mention is that the persecution and prosecution of Magnitsky was done by the Russian government, whereas these unfortunate actions in the United States were done by fringe groups or crazies.”

The Magnitsky Act bars any Russian official associated with the lawyer’s treatment or with other alleged rights abuses from travel to the United States or access to its financial institutions.

The Russian political leadership’s overreaction to the Magnitsky censure, Gregory said, shows that it has yet to overcome its terrible history under the dictatorship of Josef Stalin of mistreating the children of political opponents. 

"Putin's not going to shed a tear over it," Gregory said of the 1,500 pending U.S. adoptions likely to be blocked by the new law. "He’s going to look at this ban as a weapon in his arsenal of retaliations for the Magnitsky Act, something we can see is really causing those in the leadership some pain.”

ALSO:

Putin inclined to sign U.S. adoptions ban

Attack on Afghanistan police post kills 4

Nelson Mandela home from hospital but still under medical care

A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

carol.williams@latimes.com

Read More..

Taylor Swift’s “Red” tops Billboard chart after holiday season

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country pop darling Taylor Swift retained the top spot of the Billboard 200 album chart on Thursday after strong sales during the holiday season that saw her album “Red” mark its sixth week at No. 1 since its release two months ago.

“Red” sold 275,000 copies last week ahead of the holidays, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Swift, 23, was able to hold off rapper T.I.‘s new album “Trouble Man: Heavy is the Head” from the top spot. The rapper came in at No. 2 after selling 178,000 copies.

T.I.‘s latest record was the only new release by an individual artist to debut in the top 10 this week. The entries comprised holiday favorites such as Michael Buble‘s “Christmas” at No. 5 and some of this year’s chart-toppers, including One Direction’s “Take Me Home” at No. 4 and “Babel” by Mumford & Sons at No. 8.

Two compilation albums rounded out the top 10, with “12-12-12 The Concert for Sandy” at No. 9 and the latest Now Music installment, “Now 44″ at No. 10.

The star-studded “12-12-12″ compilation was released to raise funds for victims of superstorm Sandy following a live concert at New York’s Madison Square Gardens on December 12.

The album features live recordings of songs by Bruce Springsteen, Roger Waters, The Rolling Stones and Alicia Keys.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Eric Kelsey and David Brunnstrom)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Taylor Swift’s “Red” tops Billboard chart after holiday season
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

Read More..

Wind Farm Developers Race Against End of Tax Credit

WASHINGTON — Forget about parties, resolutions or watching the ball drop. To Iberdrola Renewables, New Year’s Eve will mean checking on last-minute details like the data connections between 169 new wind turbines in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and California and its control center in Portland, Ore.

All over the country, developers are in a sprint to get new wind farms up and running before Tuesday, when the federal wind production tax credit will disappear like Cinderella’s ball gown. After that, the nation’s wind-farm building will be at a virtual standstill.

The stakes of meeting the deadline are enormous. Wind turbines that are connected to the grid and in commercial service before midnight on New Year’s Eve are entitled to a 2.2 cent tax credit for each kilowatt-hour they generate in their first 10 years, which comes out to about $1 million for a big turbine. As it stands now, those that enter service on Jan. 1 or later are out of luck.

The deadline is a bit like the April 15 one for filing income taxes, but “there are no extensions here,” said Paul Copleman, a spokesman for Iberdrola. To reduce the risk of missing it — a risk that increases when managing construction projects on mountaintops in New England in the winter — the company allowed more than a year for what are normally nine-month construction projects.

More than just individual projects are at risk; the wind industry says it expects installations to decline by 90 percent next year, with the loss of thousands of jobs. The erratic pattern of wind subsidies has spawned a boom-and-bust cycle, with supplier companies building factories that run at full production for months and then shut down when demand collapses.

The industry has long experience with drop-dead deadlines: since the tax credit began in the early 1990s, it has expired three times, said Elizabeth A. Salerno, director of industry data and analysis at the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group based in Washington. Each time, new installations fell from 73 percent to 93 percent, according to the association.

Congress, which last renewed the credit as part of the 2009 fiscal stimulus package, balked at an extension this year. Opponents argue that the money spent so far, about $14.7 billion, is enough, and that a renewal could cost about $12.2 billion were it to last for 10 years. They also complain that the credit allows wind machines to be profitable even when there is a surplus of electricity and the market price for it falls to zero.

The tax credit could be equal to one-sixth to one-half of the revenue from the wind turbine, depending on electricity prices in the area of the generator.

Wind advocates say that the wind production tax credit did not cost the taxpayers any money, because it stimulated economic activity, in the form of manufacturing and construction, that was taxed at the federal, state and local levels.

Iberdrola’s wind farm near Rosamond, Calif., with 126 turbines, opened last week. The company said it was “extremely optimistic” that its 19-turbine farm in Monroe and Florida, Mass., and a 24-turbine farm in Groton, N.H., would be up and running by Monday night, but declined to say precisely when.

 According to the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, wind developers were planning to install 12,000 megawatts of wind capacity this year, but as of Nov. 30, only about 6,000 megawatts had been completed.

The remaining 6,000 megawatts works out to more than 3,000 turbines: if they are all operating by late Monday night, the wind industry will have added 12 percent to its capacity in a single month. (A megawatt is the power required by, say, everything in a full-size Walmart with an included supermarket. Over the course of a year, however, a turbine produces only about one-third of its theoretical maximum capacity.)  

Iberdrola did not disclose the price of each wind farm, but the industry average is about $2 million per megawatt, meaning that the three projects may have cost a total of more than $500 million.

Wind advocates say they will seek to revive the tax credit when a new Congress convenes next month, but it will not be at the top of Congress’s agenda.

With the tax credit due to expire, few developers are now taking the early steps required to establish a wind farm, like negotiating deals to sell the power and ordering the equipment. Mr. Copleman, the Iberdrola spokesman, said his company had a variety of projects “at various stages” but was “unlikely to be pouring any concrete next year.”

For projects being wrapped up now, Ms. Salerno said, developers lined up power purchase agreements with utilities and then arranged financing a year and a half to two years ago, with the economics predicated on the tax credit.

The start-and-stop pattern of recent years has repeatedly affected companies up and down the chain, especially the highly specialized ones that make towers, blades and generators. Robert Thresher, a wind expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, Colo., said manufacturers were “trying to run down their inventory so they wouldn’t be caught holding turbines” after the market collapsed in January.

A study commissioned by the wind industry predicts the loss of 37,000 jobs as a result of the credit’s expiration. For example, the Spanish company Gamesa, which built the giant blades for the New Hampshire project at its factory in Ebensburg, Pa., has announced the layoffs of more than 150 workers.

Some members of Congress have proposed that the credit be renewed, perhaps with a phaseout over a few years. A one-year extension would be of little use: Ms. Salerno said it would not give developers enough time to get new projects financed, built and put on the grid before the expiration date, even if they had already completed environmental studies and obtained the various permits required.

A one-year extension would work for developers, she said, but only “if you knew 24 months ahead of time that this was going to happen.”

Read More..

Regulators ask Edison questions about San Onofre restart plan

Federal regulators have sent Southern California Edison a new set of detailed questions that will help them evaluate the feasibility of a partial restart of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant.

The plant, which once supplied enough power for about 1.4 million homes, has been out of service for close to a year because of unusual wear on steam generator tubes that carry radioactive water.

Edison has requested permission to restart one of two reactor units at the plant and run it at 70% capacity for five months. The company provided analysis to show that the lower power level would alleviate the conditions that caused the tubes to vibrate excessively and knock against support structures and adjacent tubes.

In questions submitted Wednesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission asked Edison to provide additional analysis showing what the extent of the tube-to-tube wear would be and whether the plant would meet standards for tube integrity if the unit were operated at 100% of its licensed power.

Activists opposed to the plant's restart expressed hope that if Edison can't show that the plant could operate safely at 100% power, it might be required to apply for a license amendment and go through a courtroom-like hearing to operate at reduced power — something they have been pushing for.

NRC spokesman Victor Dricks declined to comment on that issue.

Edison spokeswoman Jennifer Manfre said the company would be answering all of the NRC's questions as part of a thorough review process. She declined to comment on how Edison's response might affect that process, but said the company is "confident that Unit 2 at San Onofre can be operated safely and within industry norms."

Dricks said he did not anticipate that the latest round of NRC questions would extend the timetable for reviewing the restart plan. The NRC has said tentatively that it could reach a decision on the restart proposal in March.

The questions submitted Wednesday addressed some other issues discussed at a public meeting between Edison representatives and NRC staff earlier this month. NRC senior materials engineer Emmett Murphy questioned whether tubes that have been plugged to take them out of service — either because of wear or as a precaution — could eventually pose problems.

Some of the tubes, Murphy pointed out, "are adjacent to a retainer bar that vibrates, and this vibration was the cause of wear in some tubes." In the long term, he said, the plugged tubes could wear through and break, damaging other tubes.

The NRC also queried Edison on details of an upgraded loose parts monitoring system the company proposed to install.

Edison has not proposed a restart plan for the plant's second reactor, where the tube damage was more extensive.

But Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the manufacturer of the steam generators, has been testing mock-ups of redesigned support structures that could be part of a longer term repair plan for the plant. Inadequate support structures in the steam generators have been blamed in part for the wear problems.

The NRC last month cited some procedural issues with the testing. A Mitsubishi spokesman said that the issues had to do with documentation and that the test results were accurate.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

Read More..