Another U.S. Nuclear Plant Is Slated for Resurrection

Current conditions: A potential tropical storm is barreling toward Georgia and the Carolina coast • The Northeastern U.S. is facing poor air quality due to Canadian wildfire smoke, with the air quality index surging past 135 in Binghamton, New York • South Africa is facing severe thunderstorms in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Gauteng.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Another U.S. nuclear plant prepares for resurrection

In an historic first last month, U.S. regulators gave tentative approval to restart the Palisades nuclear station in Michigan. If everything goes according to plan, the plant will become the country’s first atomic facility to come back online after permanently shutting down in 2022. Now a second such project has entered the pipeline. Iowa’s only nuclear plant, Duane Arnold Energy Center, closed down in 2020. The plant’s owner, NextEra Energy, had planned to build a solar farm. But the company has now filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seeking to reclaim the interconnection rights that the Duane Arnold plant had passed onto the solar project, World Nuclear News reported Wednesday.

It’s not the only project that could come back online. Last September, Microsoft put up $15 billion to reopen the working reactor of Constellation Energy’s Three Mile Island plant. As my colleague Katie Brigham wrote yesterday, dealmaking is surging across the entire industry, from uranium enrichers to small modular reactor developers. “This year is by far the biggest year in terms of nuclear deals that has occurred, probably, since the 70s,” Adam Stein, the director of nuclear innovation at The Breakthrough Institute, told her.

2. Interior Department cancels Idaho wind farm

The Department of the Interior yanked the Biden-era approval of the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a planned 231-turbine farm covering more than 57,000 acres in Idaho. The Biden administration had given the project its final green light last December. The following month, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed an executive order directing all state agencies to work with the new Trump administration to reverse the approval. “Under President Donald Trump’s bold leadership, the Department is putting the brakes on deficient, unreliable energy and putting the American people first,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement announcing the change. “By reversing the Biden administration’s thoughtless approval of the Lava Ridge Wind Project, we are protecting tens of thousands of acres from harmful wind policy while shielding the interests of rural Idaho communities.”

The reversal is part of a broader crackdown on wind and solar that has escalated since the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Just last week, the Interior Department ordered officials to weed out pro-renewables policies and rescinded the designation for offshore wind projects. Heatmap’s Jael Holzman has more on the Trump administration’s all-out effort to squelch the industry.

3. EPA chief vows to revive New England gas pipeline project

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin vowed to revive a gas pipeline project abandoned amid pushback in 2020. In an op-ed in The Boston Globe, Zeldin blamed New York for blocking the Constitution Pipeline and making the Northeast dependent on imported gas. “States should not block critical energy infrastructure in the name of climate change, as New York’s former governor did. And states like New York should not have veto authority to dictate energy policy for, and increase energy costs of, other states,” he wrote. “New England should come together to support American energy infrastructure, including the Constitution Pipeline project, to provide much-needed grid stability, create jobs, and reduce energy prices across the region for American families who have suffered long enough.”

Despite Zeldin’s adversarial tone, New York’s current governor, Kathy Hochul, has already shown her willingness to work with the Trump administration to restart gas pipeline development. When Hochul met with President Donald Trump in May to defend the Empire Wind project, she also expressed support for building new gas pipelines in the state, Burgum said on X. The growth in the nation’s appetite for gas-fired power isn’t slowing. German infrastructure giant Siemens Energy set a new record for gas turbine orders this week.

4. Trump fires most of Puerto Rico’s oversight board amid hurricane season

A protester waves a pro-independence flag in San Juan, Puerto Rico.Angel Valentin/Getty Images

Trump this week fired five of the eight members of the fiscal oversight board Congress put in charge of Puerto Rico’s finances, thrusting the most populous U.S. territory into fresh chaos amid hurricane season. All five of the appointees were Democrats. Puerto Rico went into bankruptcy in 2016 after accruing more than $120 billion in debt between unfunded pension obligations and bonds. As a territory, the island fell under the jurisdiction of Congress, which passed the PROMESA Act, establishing the board whose members the White House appointed and giving the panel supreme power over how Puerto Rico’s elected government spent money. The following year, Hurricane María decimated the island’s power grid. The board, pejoratively referred to by many Puerto Ricans as la junta, oversaw the privatization of the territory’s power system, granting control over the grid to LUMA Energy and the generating plants to the gas company New Fortress Energy.

Both of those electricity deals are now facing fresh scrutiny. Governor Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican ally of Trump, canceled a $20 billion liquified natural gas contract with New Fortress, and has promised to initiate the process to end LUMA’s deal. Whomever Trump appoints to the board could help shape those outcomes. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, just reassigned dozens of Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers to focus on deportations instead of storm readiness.

5. Hawaiian shipper halts EV deliveries over fears of battery fires

The cargo company that delivers most of Hawaii’s cars has suspended shipments of electric vehicles to the state over fears of battery fires. Honolulu-based Matson told its customers in mid-July that the move was “effective immediately,” E&E News reported. The ban includes all “used or new EVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles,” the company said.

The move is part of what my colleague Jael has described as a spreading nationwide panic over the risk batteries pose following the Moss Landing battery fire in January, even though the San Francisco-area facility was something of a “technological outlier.”

THE KICKER

New research into how the invasive South American apple snail regrows its eyes could set the stage for a human ocular breakthrough. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that immediately after amputation, the snails had about 9,000 genes that were expressed at different rates compared to normal adult snail eyes. “If we find a set of genes that are important for eye regeneration, and these genes are also present in vertebrates, in theory we could activate them to enable eye regeneration in humans,” Alice Accorsi, the assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology who authored the study, said in a statement.