On Oct. 3, researchers saw something nobody had seen for a century. Chinook salmon were swimming freely along the Klamath River in California and Oregon. The arrival of the salmon signaled that the last and largest dam standing of the four hydroelectric dams on the river, the Iron Gate dam, was no more. The dam … More Salmon return to the dam free Klamath River

The Department of Energy should stop work on the long-troubled, fabulously costly high-level nuclear waste (HLW) treatment plant at its closed Hanford weapons site in Washington state, according to the Government Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency. DOE has been working on a pilot plant to mix some 3 million gallons high-level liquid waste left … More GAO to DOE: Pause and rethink Hanford nuke waste vitrification

In Montana, local and national environmental and land use advocates are fighting a state-approved expansion of a controversial underground coal mine, the only underground mine in the state. Attorneys for Earthjustice, the national environmental law firm, have sued Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality for an Aug. 1 approval of an 12.7 million ton expansion of … More Montana underground coal mine faces deep court challenges

The surging floodwaters of Hurricane Helene slightly damaged one of the two Nuclear Regulatory Commission uranium fuel fabrication plants licensed to process highly enriched uranium, Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc., in Erwin, Tenn. The plant is in eastern Tennessee, just across the North Carolina line, 0.2 mile from the flooded Nolichucky River. The Johnson City Press … More Hurricane Helene’s atomic energy impacts

In a recent article in The Nation, arguing [unpersuasively—Ed.] that the Tennessee Valley Authority should repeat its 1970s fervid enthusiasm for nuclear power to combat global warming, writer Fred Stafford begins with a rhapsodic description of driving by TVA’s Watts Bar nuke. In that description, he writes, “As I drove across State Highway 68, a … More H2O: The most abundant and most consequential greenhouse gas

NuScale Power, long touted as the most mature of the various small reactor proposals on the market, has failed to make the cut in the U.K.’s SMR design competition, undertaken by the government’s Great British Nuclear (GBN). Four competitors – GE Hitachi, Westinghouse, Holtec International, and Rolls Royce – made the finals and will submit … More Big news for small reactors: UK competition, South Korean license action

The Tennessee Valley Authority has released a new, unconventional 25-year draft integrated resource plan (IRP), including a draft environmental impact statement, replacing the 2019 plan. The draft plan has generated both heat, yawns, and head-scratching. Typically, electric utility integrated resource plans have a five-year timeframe. That was the case for TVA’s prior plan. The new … More TVA 2050 integrated resource plan: Through a glass darkly?

Facing a series of costly physical problems and a becalmed market, GE Vernova, the largest offshore wind turbine developer in the U.S., has informed European authorities that it plans to lay off up to 900 workers around the world as it scales back its offshore business. The Maritime Executive reported that the General Electric wind … More GE Vernova’s U.S. offshore wind business faces rough seas

Just as Holtec International has hit a potentially significant pothole in its road to restart the moribund Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, Constellation Energy says it has a deal to restart its shuttered Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania. Is this a trend, or just a limited instance of life after nuclear death? There’s … More Nuclear Recommissioning: Palisades problem, TMI 1 to restart

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is pushing back against a recent gas pipeline ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals from the D.C. Circuit. The court in July vacated FERC’s approval of a Transco project to move gas from the Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania to New Jersey, ruling that the agency’s 2023 approval was … More FERC’s Phillips pushes back on pipeline decisions