Nuclear construction wave starts in Tennessee

This roundup of energy news headlines comes from our Southeast Energy News newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.

NUCLEAR

• Kairos Power’s groundbreaking at a demonstration plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, seems to mark a new wave of nuclear power plant construction that includes GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy​’s plan to build a 300 MW BWRX-300 boiling-water reactors at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River site. (Canary Media)

• Brookfield Asset Management partners with The Nuclear Co. to restart construction of two AP1000 reactors at South Carolina’s V.C. Summer Nuclear Station, which developers abandoned nearly a decade ago. (Bloomberg)

• GE Vernova announces a partnership with nuclear startup Blue Energy to build a ​“gas-plus-nuclear” power plant to supply a Texas data center, which will burn natural gas to finance construction of a nuclear station. (E&E News)

• Tennessee Valley Authority interim CEO Mike Skaggs says the federal utility will work with the Trump administration to clarify its position on nuclear energy. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

WIND

• Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, the U.S.’s largest under-construction offshore wind farm, has nine turbines in the water and is installing two turbines a day, putting it on track to begin operating next year. (E&E News, Utility Dive)

MANUFACTURING

• Shoals Technologies Group opens a $30 million, 638,000-square-foot campus in Tennessee to consolidate three previous factories and produce electronic systems for solar, battery storage, and data center facilities. (PV Magazine, Solar Power World)

SOLAR

• Virginia regulators allow Dominion Energy to pay a reduced rate for excess power produced by customers’ rooftop solar recommendations, though not quite as low as what the utility requested. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

FOSSIL FUELS

• Oil company Sentinel Midstream announces it will begin construction of a deepwater oil export project off the Texas coast. (Reuters)

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hails the opening of a 450 MW gas-fired power plant, the first such project to be funded through a state fund aimed at incentivizing more gas construction. (KCEN)

• Residents of a Texas housing development are upset to learn their homes were built on a site where radioactive fracking waste was dumped. (The Barbed Wire)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

• Public charging infrastructure developer Greenlane expands its EV charging network for commercial trucks into Texas along the I-45 corridor between Dallas and Houston. (news release)

• The Virginia Department of Energy announces a new round of funding for EV charging infrastructure in underserved communities. (Cardinal News)

GRID

• The North American Electric Reliability Corp. issues a high-level alert about threats large data centers pose to the power system, after reports of data centers abruptly dropping offline in Virginia and Texas elevate concerns about outages. (E&E News)

DATA CENTERS

• West Virginia residents turn to lawsuits and local elections to fight data centers after the state legislature passed a law removing local authority over such projects. (Mountain State Spotlight)

• Elon Musk’s xAI abruptly stops construction of a water recycling plant to alleviate strain on the water supply near its data center complex in Memphis, Tennessee, spurring concerns about the area’s drinking water supply. (E&E News)

• More than 70 data centers are being built or already operating in central Texas, raising concerns about residents’ health as well as energy and water. (Houston Chronicle)

• RCK Digital Crossroads proposes a 2.3-million-square-foot data center complex in Virginia. (Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star)

UTILITIES

• Dominion Energy and South Carolina state-owned utility Santee Cooper ask state regulators for rate increases. (South Carolina Daily Gazette)

CLIMATE

• Hurricane Helene disrupted support systems for people recovering from addiction in North Carolina, exposing how flooding and other symptoms of climate change can lead to increases in the risk of relapse and overdose. (Grist/​Assembly)s