FERC said last week that three Berkshire Hathaway Energy utilities that plan to join CAISO’s energy imbalance market (EIM) failed to demonstrate a lack of market power.

The order — one of four the commission issued regarding the ISO’s expansion plans — said market power analyses by PacifiCorp and NV Energy’s Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power were deficient (ER15-2281, et al.).

The order also noted the commission’s concerns regarding the ability of CAISO to mitigate the companies’ market power. It said the Berkshire Hathaway companies must offer units participating in the EIM at or below each unit’s default energy bid. It also required the companies to cooperate with CAISO’s enforcement of internal transmission constraints in the PacifiCorp and NV Energy balancing authority areas.

The commission also granted CAISO’s request to include in its local market power mitigation procedures transfer constraints between the NV Energy balancing authority area and the CAISO and PacifiCorp East balancing authority areas (ER15-2272).

A third order approved CAISO’s proposed readiness requirements for entities joining the EIM (ER15-861-004). The order also accepts CAISO’s proposed thresholds for measuring the entity’s readiness and its process for granting exceptions to the thresholds.

Another order accepted the ISO’s proposal regarding modeling unscheduled flows and enforcement of physical flow limits on its interties (ER14-2017-001).

More: CAISO Expands Reach to 7 States with Imbalance Market

Justice Department, EFH Settle on NM Uranium Mines

The Justice Department has reached a settlement with Energy Future Holdings over claims the company’s bankruptcy could leave taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up long-shuttered uranium mines in northwest New Mexico that one of its subsidiaries inherited.

An attorney for EFH, which primarily owns utilities and power generation assets, announced a “settlement in principal” in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 19.

More: Dallas Morning News

EPA Settles with Pa., W.Va. Natural Gas Processing Plant Operators

Elkhorn Investments and Elkhorn Gas Processing will pay a $50,221 penalty under a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency for alleged violations at five natural gas processing plants in Pennsylvania and another in West Virginia.

The plants, in McKean, Warren and Putnam counties, have come into compliance with risk management and safety requirements, EPA said. The violations occurred under two separate sections of the Clean Air Act.

More: State Impact

Entergy Tells Feds FitzPatrick Closing

Entergy officially notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to close the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York by early 2017 “due to the current continued deteriorating economics of the facility.”

New York officials had held out hope that they could convince Entergy to keep the plant on Lake Ontario open, even after Entergy made a public announcement that it intended to shut it down. (See Entergy Closing FitzPatrick Nuclear Plant in New York). Entergy, in keeping with a requirement to notify NRC promptly of any decisions, told the agency that it does, indeed, intend to shut down the plant near Oswego.

“Entergy and state officials worked very hard over the past two months to reach a constructive and mutually beneficial agreement to avoid a shutdown, but were unsuccessful,” said Entergy spokeswoman Tammy Holden.

More: Syracuse.com

Sens. Against EPA Rules Got Big Contributions from Coal

The 52 U.S. senators who voted last week to scrap two controversial Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would affect coal interests accepted an average of $75,802 in campaign contributions from coal interest groups, according to a CNBC review of public records.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, accepted $350,000 in campaign contributions since 2009. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, another state where coal is king, has accepted nearly $500,000 from coal groups since 2009.

Manchin is unapologetic. “The president’s energy agenda has had a crushing impact on West Virginia and other energy states,” he said in a statement released last week.

More: CNBC

DOE Awards $800K to Penn State to Study Nuke Waste

The Energy Department is sending $800,000 to Pennsylvania State University researchers who are trying to find ways to isolate and strip cesium and strontium from nuclear waste, according to Hojong Kim, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the university.

“Alkali and alkaline-earth elements are very strong and reactive metals, so it is hard to separate them from other elements,” Kim said. “Cesium and strontium have a relatively short half-life — about 30 years — so they produce the highest amount of heat in the short term of all radioactive elements created through nuclear fission.”

More: Penn State

House Dems Investigating Oil, Coal Companies

A group of House Democrats is investigating whether oil and coal companies have lied to the public about climate change.

The lawmakers said they were prompted to action by recent news reports that Exxon Mobil knew as early as the 1970s that oil and natural gas cause global warming but later emphasized doubt about the science. The lawmakers want to see if other companies have a similar history.

Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) are asking colleagues to sign letters that will be sent to Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Peabody Energy to ask what the companies knew about global warming and when they knew it.

More: The Hill

Exelon’s Byron Nuclear Station Renewal Application OK’d by NRC

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved Exelon’s request for 20-year extensions to the operating licenses of the two units at Byron Generating Station in Illinois.

Exelon, however, said it has not made a final decision on whether or not it will continue to operate the economically challenged plants for another five years, let alone 20. The energy giant has said that Byron is losing money, and without government incentives it may be forced to shutter the plant.

It said a decision on the plant’s future has been deferred for at least another year.

More: WREX

NRC Issues EIS for Possible Fourth Reactor at Artificial Island

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the environmental impact statement on a possible fourth reactor to be built on the grounds of Public Service Enterprise Group’s Salem and Hope Creek nuclear stations.

NRC found no major environmental barriers to building a reactor on the site, where three nuclear reactors currently operate. PSEG submitted the EIS in 2010 for a possible new nuclear plant but says it has no immediate plans to go forward with the project.

“We don’t have any plans right now with the economics [being what they are],’’ said Joseph Delmar, a spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, which operates Salem I and II and Hope Creek reactors on Artificial Island in the Delaware Bay. “It doesn’t make sense.”

More: NJ Spotlight