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The New Hampshire House last week approved, by a veto-proof vote of 246-104, legislation that would withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program established in the Northeast. The bill is now headed to the Senate, where it is expected to pass.

Old Dominion Electric Cooperative’s (ODEC’s) announcement on Monday that it will withdraw participation in and ownership of a third-generation reactor planned for construction by Dominion Virginia Power at its North Anna Nuclear Power Station in Louisa County, Va., will not change its plans to build the potential project, Dominion said.

The three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Friday threw out a motion to shelve proceedings for the Yucca Mountain license case through May 20. The judges also asked the NRC to explain why it whited-out portions of a report assessing the safety of the Nevada nuclear waste repository that was released last week.

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.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday finalized a $96.8 million Recovery Act–supported loan guarantee to Neal Hot Springs, a project sponsored by U.S. Geothermal, to construct a 23-MW geothermal project in Oregon’s Malheur County.

In his January State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass legislation that would allow the U.S. to source 80% of its electricity from “clean energy” sources by 2035—including traditional renewable sources like wind and solar as well as nuclear and “clean coal.” That broadened definition of “clean energy” was designed to inspire bipartisan interest, as was widely reported. But, as was also widely pointed out, the speech followed a visit to Washington from Chinese government officials and a series of key agreements aimed at increasing “clean energy” cooperation between the two countries.

France in January announced its contribution to the wave of small and modular reactors (SMRs): a submarine-like nuclear plant that can be submerged in waters 60 meters (m) to 100 m deep and several kilometers offshore.

Brazil’s environment agency, IBAMA, in January issued a partial installation license that allows for construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam complex, an 11,233-MW project estimated to cost some 19.6 billion reals (US$11.7 billion), to begin on the margins of the Amazon’s Xingu River. Saying the project is needed to meet soaring electricity demand when completed, as planned in 2015, the government gave license to dam-building consortium Norte Energia to begin clearing 238.1 hectares (588 acres) of forestland.