The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to the Tennessee Valley Authority outlining allegations of a “chilling effect” at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, where control room operators have expressed concerns about raising safety issues. NRC earlier this month said it was looking into the issue, but sending the letter formalizes its intent to investigate.

“While we believe TVA management understands these issues, the chilling effect letter documents the NRC concerns and our expectations that TVA fully address them and ensure that all plant employees feel free to raise any safety problems,” NRC Region II Administrator Cathy Haney said in a statement. The letter gives TVA 30 days to respond.

“I think it’s important to note that neither NRC nor TVA have found evidence of any actual retaliation, but both have found that just the perception that retaliation has happened can have the same effect,” TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said. “This is just as serious to us as any type of actual retaliation.”

More: Knoxville News Sentinel

Protesters Arrested at FERC ‘Pancakes not Pipelines’ Event

A documentary filmmaker and six others were arrested after they blocked the garage entrance of FERC headquarters to protest a pipeline project that would deliver Marcellus Shale natural gas to Northeastern markets.

Josh Fox, the maker of the anti-drilling film “Gasland,” was part of the protest, in which FERC commissioners were invited to sample pancakes topped with maple syrup produced from trees that were cleared for the Constitution Pipeline in Pennsylvania.

“It is clear to me that FERC has to be the most destructive agency in the United States right now,” said protester and syrup producer Megan Holleran. “They are faceless, nameless, unelected and ignore citizen input.”

More: Beyond Extreme Energy

Circuit Court Gives Sierra Club Chance to Obtain Entergy Records

A federal appeals court will allow the Sierra Club to make its case in federal court to obtain records that Entergy supplied to EPA about two Arkansas coal plants and a third plant in Louisiana.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Sierra Club’s efforts to obtain the documents, which concern the 1,700-MW Independence and White Bluff coal plants in Arkansas, which operate without major emission-reducing scrubbers. The third plant is a 30-year-old coal plant near Lake Charles, La.

Glen Hooks, director of the Sierra Club of Arkansas, said his organization uses such emissions documents to monitor whether Clean Air Act violations are occurring. “I don’t think we’re going to have a lot of trouble getting the documents now,” he said.

More: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Tennessee Gas Seeks Pipeline Challenge Dismissal

Tennessee Gas Pipeline has asked FERC to dismiss an attempt by an advocacy group to block construction of a 4-mile pipeline spur that cuts through a state-protected forest in western Massachusetts.

The filing opposes a motion by Sandisfield Taxpayers Opposing the Pipeline to prevent immediate tree-cutting. The regulators approved the pipeline project on March 11. The loop is part of a 13-mile, $87 million Connecticut Expansion Project that would provide additional natural gas to three utilities.

The state of Massachusetts is also trying to delay the project, arguing that the state constitution protects the woodlands unless lawmakers grant an exemption, which they have declined to do.

More: The Berkshire Eagle

Energy Companies Bid $156M For Gulf Drilling Leases

Thirty exploration companies bid $156 million to lease 128 oil and natural gas tracts in the central section of the Gulf of Mexico. The area covers nearly 700,000 acres 3 to 230 nautical miles off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

While bidding was heavy for the central section, no bids were received for the Eastern Planning Area, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

More: World Oil

Feds Approve Research Wind Facility Offshore Virginia

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved construction of two 6-MW wind turbines to be installed 27 miles off the coast of Virginia as part of a research project to test how the turbines hold up under harsh conditions.

“Data collected under this research lease will help us better understand the wind potential, weather and other conditions off of Virginia’s coast,” BOEM Director Abigail Ross Hopper said.

Dominion Resources issued a request for bids for the research turbines last year. The bids came back between $375 million and $400 million, about twice as high as expected, so Dominion delayed the project’s start date from 2017 to 2018. Dominion has a lease on 113,000 acres for offshore wind development.

More: The Associated Press

EPA Believes it has Mapped Extent of Nuclear Waste

Radiation from nuclear waste that was buried in the 1970s has migrated farther than once thought, according to EPA. The waste in the West Lake Landfill near St. Louis comes from uranium processing of material for the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

EPA said mapping shows some of the waste products seem to be about 600 feet further than thought, but the agency downplayed the risk. “While the footprint of the [radiologically impacted material] has changed … there’s still no significant health risk posed by the radioactive waste at the West Lake Landfill,” EPA’s Brad Vann said.

EPA is mapping the waste as part of an investigation to determine how to build a barrier to contain the material.

More: St. Louis Post-Dispatch