Hundreds of fired probationary employees from the U.S. Department of Energy are returning to work but they may have to go through a new hire onboarding process and face the looming possibility of being fired again.
Tri-City lawmakers have seen some of the bills they are sponsoring or co-sponsoring – concerning housing, career and higher education and even littering – survive the first cutoff for consideration during the 2025 legislative session.
With Amazon and Energy Northwest teaming up to provide small modular nuclear reactors located at Energy Northwest’s campus in north Richland, local utilities are taking notice – and they are planning to take advantage of the opportunity.
U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse said Tuesday he told the Trump administration “there should be a more nuanced approach to terminations and furloughs,” referring to cuts at Bonneville as well as the Hanford nuclear cleanup site and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
A PNNL team designed the new system to require significantly less starting material while delivering results equal to the standard lab-scale test systems, all with the intent to speed the time to discovery of new grid energy storage technology.
Federal lawmakers from Washington state and Oregon have criticized the layoffs, saying they are going to cripple cleanup efforts at the nation’s largest nuclear contaminated site and a power grid that supplies power to multiple states and hundreds of thousands of consumers.
The Bonneville Power Administration reports that it expects part of its operations to end the year with less than two months’ cash on hand and that could trigger an automatic power rate increase.
Kennewick-based Cascade Natural Gas Corp. could be required to pay a $1 million fine if the state’s utilities and transportation commission agrees with its staff’s findings that the company violated an agreement regarding the safety of its pipelines.
