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On Tuesday, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) provisionally raised the accident rating for three reactors at the crippled six-unit Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture to Level 7—making it a “major accident” and putting in on par with the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine. And today the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) confirmed damage to spent nuclear fuel rods stored in the Unit 4 building.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday told Unistar Nuclear Energy it could not issue the company an operating license for its planned reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland because it was fully owned by France’s Électricité de France (EDF)—a foreign entity.

Progress Energy Florida last week told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state regulators that Crystal River Nuclear plant has been shut down indefinitely while the company conducts a “thorough engineering analysis and review” of a new gap in the reactor’s containment building wall that resulted from tendon retensioning work.

California’s Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law SBX1-2, a law that increases the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) target from 20% in 2010 to 33% by 2020—the most aggressive goal in the nation. In his signing message, Brown said he would pursue even more far-reaching targets, pushing the RPS to 40% in the “near future.”

A report released last week by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) that broadly assesses the costs and benefits to modernize the U.S. power system suggests that investments needed to deploy a fully functional smart grid range between $338 billion and $476 billion—but could result in benefits of $1.3 trillion to $2 trillion.

In 2010, only 5,116 MW of nameplate wind capacity was added in the U.S.—a nearly 50% drop from the record 10,000 MW installed in 2009, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said in its newly released annual report. The industry group said, however, that wind power capacity added in 2010 made up 26% of all new generating capacity added in the U.S.—second only to natural gas.

Solar power in the U.S. received multiple boosts in the past week as the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized $2.7 billion in loan guarantees for solar projects in California while making available $170 million in funding for solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies, and GE Energy announced plans for what it said will be the biggest solar PV panel factory in the U.S.

In a major breakthrough at the crisis-stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant, engineers who had been desperately struggling to contain radioactivity at the plant’s units today managed to stop highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) says, however, that it will continue to pump contaminated water into the sea for lack of storage capacity, and efforts are under way to begin injection of nitrogen into the primary containment vessel of Daiichi 1.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday proposed a rule—granting a Clean Air Act petition filed by New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)—to limit sulfur dioxide emissions from a 420-MW coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania that it alleged was adversely impacting air quality in four New Jersey counties.

Progress Energy Carolinas will shut down its 170-MW W.H. Weatherspoon coal-fired power plant this fall, several years ahead of the originally announced retirement schedule. The decision follows an evaluation of system resource needs.