Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to enforce its ruling last year and order EPA to put its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards on hold.

Schuette asked the court to issue a stay on the four-year-old mercury rule, which he said it invalidated in its Michigan v. EPA decision last year. In the decision, the court supported Michigan’s position that the mercury rule did not sufficiently consider the adverse economic impact the standard would impose. “We are simply asking the court to enforce its ruling and require the EPA to follow the law like everyone else,” Schuette wrote in a statement.

According to Schuette, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals “has failed to vacate the unauthorized rule, leaving it in place with the same force of law despite the Supreme Court’s rejection of it.” His office filed the request last week with Chief Justice John Roberts.

More: MLive

Bay Calls Energy Storage Potential ‘Game Changer’

FERC Chairman Norman Bay last week said energy storage has the potential to become a “game changer” when it comes to economic benefit and system reliability. Bay said the commission will need to manage ways to bring the new technology into the nation’s grid.

“Developments in storage have the potential to bring economic and reliability benefits to consumers, perhaps even to be game changers,” he told an audience at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston. “Everybody recognizes costs will decline, but the question is how much and how soon.”

More: Fuelfix Blog

Offshore Drilling Regulation to be Finalized Soon

The federal government is due to release a new rule meant to prevent offshore wellhead blowouts such as the one that caused the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Interior Department’s chief of staff, Tommy Beaudreau, told a Columbia University audience that a new rule has been in the works since the disaster. “We’ve been working ever since to try to develop new standards and new rules with respect to well control, both with respect to that critical piece of equipment, the blowout preventer,” he said.

Blowout preventers are designed to pinch shut well piping near the head in the event of a blowout. The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer did not work.

More: The Hill

Trump’s Plan for EPA: Scrap the Whole Agency

Presidential contender Donald Trump last week shared a proposal if he gets elected: scrap EPA.

“Environmental protection — we waste all of this money,” he said during Thursday’s Republican debate. “We’re going to bring that back to the states. We are going to cut many of the agencies, we will balance our budget and we will be dynamic again.”

While he was short on details, such as who or what would oversee environmental policy in the absence of the agency, he said eliminating it would save $8 billion, its entire annual budget.

More: The Guardian

Lamar Alexander Calls for End to Nuclear Waste Stalemate

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, speaking at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, said it is critical for the country to finally develop and execute a program to handle nuclear waste and called for the moribund Yucca Mountain project to be restarted.

“At a time when everyone wants to produce more carbon-free electricity, it makes no sense whatsoever to undermine this source of power by continuing this logjam and not opening Yucca Mountain to dispose of used nuclear fuel,” the Republican said during a subcommittee hearing on the Obama administration’s proposed budget for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He said he would call for a pilot program to designate consolidated storage sites for used nuclear fuel until a permanent repository is developed.

More: The Chattanoogan

Ole Miss Researchers Get $3M to Investigate Spent Fuel Options

The Department of Energy has awarded $3 million to finance the research of two University of Mississippi professors trying to find new ways to monitor spent nuclear fuel that is sealed up in dry-cask storage. Josh Gladden and Joe Mobley, physics professors, are working on ways to use ultrasonic and acoustic methods to monitor spent fuel.

Their methods could make it possible to ensure the fuel is properly stored, without having to open the storage containers. It is necessary to monitor both the fuel inside the casks, and the casks themselves, to make sure they are intact.

“Since quite a few of these casks are nearing the end of their engineered lifetime, the inspection requirement must be fulfilled in the next five years or so,” Gladden said.

More: The Oxford Eagle

Former NRC Commissioner Calls for Change in Reactor Licensing

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Jeffrey S. Merrifield said it is time to reconsider licensing requirements for advanced nuclear reactors, saying a new model is needed to help drive private sector development.

“Deployment of this new generation of reactors will require a new model, one that is more dynamic and capable of forming private-public partnership in support of private sector innovation,” he told attendees of a technical summit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“The current framework of U.S. government policy, legislation, regulation and requirements, research and development support, and fee-based licensing is more aligned with past development efforts,” he said. “This is particularly true of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process, which presents one of the largest risk factors confronting private developers of advanced reactors.”

More: The Energy Collective