Jul 14 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Frank Munger The Knoxville News Sentinel, Tenn.


A TVA-funded research program is open for business, spurred by hope that good ideas will emerge from last December's coal ash disaster.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities is managing the research program and will solicit proposals for three areas of study: environmental effects of coal fly ash releases; alternative ways to contain, handle and process coal combustion products; and characterizing properties of coal combustion products to enable more of them to be reused.

The research program is part of the response to the massive coal ash spill at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant.

Robb Turner, ORAU's group manager of scientific and technical reviews, said funding for research on environmental effects is expected to be about $1 million a year for three years. The number of projects to be funded will depend on the nature and quality of the proposals received, he said.

Additional funding will be made available for the other research areas, and a second request for proposals will be issued later for commercial demonstrations on the "beneficial reuse" of combustion products, Turner said.

The initial round of "pre-proposals" will be due by the end of August, with full proposals due in the fall and awards likely to be made before the end of the year, he said.

The funding is relatively small at a time when billions of dollars of stimulus money is available for energy research programs, and Turner said it's not clear what the response will be.

"We're anxious to find that out," he said Monday. "TVA folks have said they've had all sorts of offers to help. How many end up being research participants, we don't know."

While this isn't a big-bucks program, Turner said the funding is a "reasonable amount" to conduct university research projects. The amount of money per project will depend, in part, on how many proposals are received, and Turner said TVA has left open the possibility of contributing additional funds to the effort or soliciting money from other sources.

"The knowledge will be useful not only to TVA, but also to the utility industry, regulators and the public," Turner said.

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