Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     It’s not clear how long the shelf life is for recommissioning a limited number of shuttered nuclear sites. That’s leaving the door open for still-unproven small modular reactors. Critics note that we still haven’t solved the radioactive waste problem that raised concerns during nuclear’s first golden era.
     Rich Powell is the CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association. The association represents some of the country’s biggest commercial power customers including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft. Powell said, “But I think it’s fair to say that folks are taking a hard look at every one of them that would be technically possible to restart.”
     Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh defended the court’s decision to scrap the Chevron deference as a move to restore balance between the executive and legislative branches. Speaking recently at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, Kavanaugh said that the longstanding deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws had “put a thumb on the scale” in many legal battles over issues from the environment to health care to immigration.
     Kavanaugh continued, “What we did in Loper Bright, the chief justice’s opinion was, I think, a course correction consistent with the separation of powers to make sure that the executive branch is acting within the authorization granted to it by Congress.” Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Donald Trump in 2018. He warned against over-reading the Chevron ruling, which critics have said could shift power from agencies to judges.
     Kavanaugh added that “It’s really important, as a neutral umpire, to respect the line that Congress has drawn, and when it’s granted broad authorization, not to unduly hinder the executive branch from performing its congressionally authorized functions — but at the same time, not allowing the executive branch, as it could with Chevron in its toolkit, to go beyond the congressional authorization.”
     California Governor Gavin Newsom has entered the debate on an issue that had its moment in the culture war spotlight. He vetoed what would have been the nation’s first law mandating health risk labels on gas stoves. The legislation would have required warnings on gas stoves sold online to Californians starting next year and in stores starting in 2026.
     Newsom said in a veto message, “This static approach falls short in enabling timely updates to the labeling content that should align with the latest scientific knowledge so that consumers are accurately informed about their purchases.” The proposed warnings about the possible health impacts of “toxic” pollutants drew opposition from home appliance manufacturers, builders and business groups. Similar appliance warning bills were defeated in New York and Illinois. Newsom signed legislation delaying by six months the timeline for implementing California’s nation-leading corporate climate disclosure laws.
     The legal revision endorsed by the governor over the weekend gives state regulators until July 2025 to write the rules and make decisions on things like how much the filing fee should be for corporations disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks. The new law also allows subsidiaries to compile their disclosures at the level of their parent company. The implementation delay is shorter than the two years that Newsom had been seeking and it doesn’t go as far as the California Chamber of Commerce wanted to go in weakening the disclosure regime. With the so-called cleanup legislation in place, all eyes will turn to the next biggest threat to the laws which is a federal lawsuit led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is set for a hearing Oct. 15.