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A Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) proposed on Monday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asks three Oklahoma coal-fired power plant operators to install technology or switch to natural gas to control air emissions. The agency said the plants, built more than 30 years ago, did not meet regional haze requirements under the Clean Air Act.

License applications for Dominion’s proposed North Anna reactor in Virginia and Luminant’s two proposed reactors at Comanche Peak, in Texas—the two U.S. facilities that have chosen Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI’s) Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (APWR)—will be delayed by more than 18 months. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said structural changes made by MHI to its reactor design require a lengthened review time.

Alberta-based TransAlta and Washington State’s Gov. Chris Gregoire over the weekend reached an agreement to shut down the last coal-fired power plant in the Pacific Northwest. The first boiler of the company’s 1,460-MW plant in Centralia, Wash., will be closed in 2020 and the second in 2025.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the body representing the interests of state public utility commissions before the federal government, on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy (DOE) for not suspending fees associated with the now-defunct Yucca Mountain nuclear spent-fuel repository.

Of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S., 89 made the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) highest performance category last year, said the federal body on Tuesday.

Committees in Minnesota’s House and Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed matching bills that lift a four-year-old state law banning new coal-fired power plants of 50 MW or more. If the bills become law, they could also allow utilities in that state to import power from coal plants outside the state.

An audit of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) loan guarantee program for clean energy technologies completed last week by the agency’s inspector general found that the program could not always “readily demonstrate, through systematically organized records, including contemporaneous notes, how it resolved or mitigated relevant risks prior to granting loan guarantees.”

Morgan County, Illinois will host a sequestration site for carbon dioxide captured by the Department of Energy’s revamped $1.3 billion FutureGen pilot project. The FutureGen Alliance said on Monday that site best supported the overall mission of the project cost-effectively.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel dismissed the last objection filed by anti-nuclear groups and a Texas lawmaker to block expansion of Luminant Energy’s Comanche Peak nuclear plant.

A federal judge in Brazil on Friday ordered immediate suspension of a license permitting construction of the controversial 11,233-MW Belo Monte dam complex. The license was recently issued by Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, and it would have allowed dam-building consortium Norte Energia to begin clearing forestland on the margins of the Amazon’s Xingu River.