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South Carolina state-owned utility Santee Cooper last week said it had separately signed letters of intent with Duke Energy Carolinas and Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA) to negotiate partnerships in the two new nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station that Santee Cooper is planning with South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday it would not issue a reconsideration of the Bush administration’s ozone standard by the July 29 deadline, but it will finalize the standard “shortly.”

Entergy Corp. on Monday said it would move forward with fabrication of fuel and refueling of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant this October—even though the New Orleans–based company will then be embroiled in a federal court trial against the state of Vermont. The state is determined to shut down the nuclear plant as soon as a Legislature-approved permit expires in March 2012.

Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) on Monday said it has settled a series of lawsuits and other actions brought forth by an assortment of groups opposing construction of the 600-MW John W. Turk., Jr. power plant—the nation’s first ultrasupercritical pulverized coal power plant.

Fourteen of the European Union’s (EU’s) 27 member states that operate nuclear power plants must draw up national programs for the management of spent nuclear fuel—including concrete timetables and cost assessments—and submit them to the European Commission by 2015, at the latest, under a new EU directive adopted last week.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and Montana State University (MSU) said on Tuesday they would begin work on a $67 million, eight-year project that will involve permitting, injecting, and monitoring one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be stored in deep porous rock formations in northern Montana.

Just a month after American Electric Power (AEP) announced it would shut down 6 GW of its coal-fired capacity by 2014 because of new federal emission rules, the Ohio-based utility on Thursday terminated a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy (DOE) and brought a $668 million project to commercialize carbon capture and storage (CCS) to a screeching halt, citing an uncertain U.S. climate policy and the weak economy.

Georgia Power and Georgia’s Public Service Commission (PSC) on Monday agreed, after long negotiations, that the state agency will withdraw a proposed risk-sharing mechanism for the company’s $14 billion two-reactor nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle, in Waynesboro, Ga., but it will retain the right to strike down costs as “imprudent” even after they have been verified and approved in the established semi-annual cost review process.

Backlash against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) newly finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) mounted in the past week as Texas state agencies, utilities, and regional grid operator the Electric Reliability Council of Texas separately warned that the state could face a generation shortage if the federal pollution rules were implemented as written.

A federal judge on Monday threw out Entergy Corp.’s bid for a preliminary injunction to stop the state of Vermont from shutting down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in March 2012, when its original 40-year license expires. The ruling will force the company to decide whether it will buy $65 million of nuclear fuel to keep the plant running until a trial begins this September, or to shut down the plant.