UPDATED: Duke Energy has shut down both units at the Brunswick nuclear power plant as the North Carolina site faces hurricane-force winds, major storm surges and heavy rain. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is staffing its incident response centre in Atlanta around the clock to monitor Hurricane Florence, which has now made landfall.

California's governor has signed a bill setting a 100% clean energy goal for the state and issued an executive order setting a target to achieve carbon neutrality, both by 2045.

Terrestrial Energy USA has partnered with utility Southern Company and several US Department of Energy national laboratories to investigate the production of hydrogen using its Integral Molten Salt Reactor.

Daher has applied for certification for its DN30 package to US regulators, while China Nuclear New Energy Nuclear Industry Engineering Co Ltd's XN740 UF6 transport package has completed a 9 metre drop test.

UPDATED - The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded that Tennessee Valley Authority's methodology can be used in the future to determine if a reduced emergency planning zone is justified for small modular reactors, a spokesman for the Commission told World Nuclear News today.
 

The US Environmental Protection Agency has issued a proposed Affordable Clean Energy Rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. The new rule is to replace the Clean Power Plan which was proposed under the previous administration.

Climate impacts are intensifying by the day and the global nuclear sector must do more to position itself as a part of a larger coalition of technologies that are being mobilised in the climate fight. Changes in energy policy, including in the USA, are needed in order to achieve the aims of the industry's Harmony Programme, writes Josh Freed, vice president of Third Way's Clean Energy Programme.

Senior delegates from nuclear energy-related ministries and organisations in South Korea and the USA met on 16 August in Washington DC, in the second plenary meeting of the High Level Bilateral Commission of the two countries.

The board of Oglethorpe Power, co-owner of the Vogtle 3 and 4 construction project, is to vote by the end of September on whether to continue with the project following the announcement of increases in the project cost.

FirstEnergy Solutions Inc has taken its next regulatory step towards the closure of the Beaver Valley, Davis-Besse and Perry plants, filing plans related to their decommissioning with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has completed its final environmental assessment of the decommissioning plan for Centrus Energy Corporation's Lead Centrifuge Facility in Piketon, Ohio, with a finding of No Significant Impact.

The governors of five states in the USA's New England region have called on the regional grid operator to evaluate incentives for nuclear energy, among other affordable, clean and secure energy options.