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An explosion and fire at a French nuclear plant and jellyfish clogging Scottish and Israeli cooling water intakes were added to the list of challenges faced by nuclear and coal generators in the past week.

Last Wednesday, worsening flooding conditions along the Missouri River prompted the partial evacuation of nonessential workers from the Iatan Power Plant in Weston, Missouri, 40 miles north of Kansas City. The plant remains in operation.

For the first time in 37 years, the Japanese government ordered large customers to restrict electricity usage if they are in Tohoku Electric Power Co. Inc.’s or Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO’s) service territories, effective July 1. With the exception of essential services and powering cleanup operations at the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, large energy users are to cut consumption 15% below last summer’s levels.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced last Wednesday that it has determined that Massey Energy officials kept two sets of safety records for the Upper Big Branch Mine (UBB) in Raleigh County, W.Va., site of a deadly explosion a year ago. Additional details, including evidence that miners faced intimidation that prompted them to ignore safety hazards, point to the conclusion that the accident last spring was preventable.

Last week, New Jersey’s Legislature passed legislation that affirmed the state’s involvement in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and banned the natural gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Neighboring New York, meanwhile, is poised to lift a moratorium on new shale gas drilling, and France has become the first country to ban fracking.

On June 30, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved PSEG Nuclear’s request to extend the operating licenses of Salem Generating Station Units 1 and 2 an additional 20 years. The decision was met by protests from environmentalists, who say that PSEG Nuclear has done too little to address leaks at the plant.

FERC has surrendered jurisdiction over station power in California, putting merchant generators nationwide at risk of disadvantage to utility generators.

The late Dr. Carl Sagan once observed, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology (S&T).” I would add that those who know the least about S&T are often the ones responsible for determining policy and funding priorities. One good example of this problem is the piecemeal approach taken to developing carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies.

Gas turbine makers GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in the last week of May separately profiled unprecedented results from development or testing of three innovative combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) technologies.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel at the end of May officially endorsed a plan to shut down all 17 of the nation’s nuclear power plants by 2022. The decision, which gives the power-intensive nation just over a decade to find new sources of power for 23% of its energy needs, has had reverberations all over the world, though the future of nuclear—through growth in developing nations—continues to look sturdy.