News

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) quietly took effect on Monday, kicking off the three-year compliance period mandated under the Clean Air Act. Several more groups filed suit before the filing deadline for legal challenges on April 16, including the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), Colorado’s Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, and the American Public Power Association (APPA).

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday heard oral arguments in a case challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). A decision in the case—which stayed implementation of the first phase of the rule on Jan. 1—is expected as early as June or July.

Southern California faces a grim summer with electrical generation capacity stretched to the limit, as any prospects for a quick restart of the idled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) now appear all but dead.

Completion of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) second Watts Bar reactor will cost nearly double the $2.49 billion price estimated in 2007 and take much longer than the projected 60-month completion timeframe, a construction review undertaken by the federally owned corporation has revealed. TVA management pointed to mismanagement and faulty execution as reasons for the discrepancy.

Under a settlement agreement reached between environmental groups on Tuesday and Power4Georgians, the consortium of four electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) in Georgia will continue development of its $2.1 billion coal-fired Plant Washington but will shelve plans for its proposed 850-MW supercritical Ben Hill plant.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General Scott Pruitt last week filed a motion with a federal appeals court on behalf of the state, Oklahoma’s largest generator Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E), and Oklahoma Industrial Energy Consumers to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) regional haze rule.

A new joint venture between American Electric Power (AEP) and Kansas City–based Great Plains Energy seeks to reap advantages from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) Order 1000 and develop competitive transmission projects in the PJM Interconnection, Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and Midwest ISO transmission regions.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Wednesday announced a $30 million research competition intended to improve the performance and safety of energy storage devices, including hybrid energy storage modules being developed by the Department of Defense for military applications.

A report released by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on Tuesday examining the underlying technical factors leading to the loss of critical systems at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors concludes parameters set for tsunami flood protection were inadequate and that this led to the eventual loss of all practical cooling paths for the reactors.

China’s state-owned China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) on Monday announced it had fully completed and commissioned the fourth unit of the Qinshan Nuclear Power Phase II expansion nearly 60 days ahead of schedule.  The domestically engineered unit is China’s 15th operating nuclear power reactor.