Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina will produce at least half the plutonium pits for the Navy’s W93 warhead after the facility opens next decade, a federal official said Wednesday. “We don’t think we can get that facility up in time to do all of the W93 builds, but it’s important that we have […]

Strategic Management Solutions, a small contractor for the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration, has been acquired by a Louisiana-based private equity management firm led by a former Shaw Group executive. The purchase of Strategic Management Solutions, LLC (SMSI) was announced Tuesday in a press release by Bernhard Capital Partners. The buyer […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration seeks $70 million for a sea-launched cruise missile warhead for fiscal year 2025 as part of the agency’s list of unfunded priorities, a lawmaker said Wednesday. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm acknowledged at the start of a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the weapon was among the […]

Federal and state agencies could soon provide details about a new conceptual agreement for cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said Tuesday. Cantwell spoke during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on DOE’s fiscal 2025 budget request. The conceptual agreement, announced in May 2023, […]

Nuclear weapons and nuclear power are on the hearing docket Wednesday morning in the Senate, while one scheduled hearing slipped off. The Senate Armed Services Committee has moved the open portion of its hearing about the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) fiscal year 2025 budget request up half an hour, to 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. […]

In a Tuesday hearing, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) requested, but did not get, a promise from the Secretary of Energy that President Joe Biden (D) would follow rules in a House-passed bill if his administration bans imports of Russian uranium. “If the administration does impose its own ban on Russian uranium imports, will you commit […]

After more than three years and one near-settlement, the final plaintiff suing the Department of Energy prime managing the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has settled her case in federal court over COVID-19 vaccination policy. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley formally dismissed the case by plaintiff Jessica Bilyeu after Bilyeu notified the […]

The Legacy Mine Cleanup Bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), passed the Senate Monday in a voice vote. The legislation would make permanent a special Western office with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help coordinate reclamation of abandoned hardrock mines, including legacy uranium sites, according to online data on […]

The Missouri House of Representatives was set to vote as soon as this week on bills that would give tax breaks for the planned expansion of the Kansas City Nuclear Security Campus in Missouri.  On Monday, the legislation was on the informal third reading calendar of the state’s 163-member House of Representatives, meaning the measure […]

The Department of Energy announced April 11 in a Federal Register notice it is renewing the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board for two more years. The board, set up under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, offers local advice on nuclear cleanup-related issues to DOE’s assistant secretary for environmental management. The renewal was effective April 8, […]

A U.S. Senator asked Tuesday if a planned manufacturing plant in Kansas poses a threat to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nearby factory in Missouri for non-nuclear nuclear-weapon components. The conservative publication Daily Caller in December reported that Cnano Technology USA Inc., a company the publication said has ties to Chinese businesses, planned to build […]

Tennessee-based Boston Government Services said Monday it has hired a Leidos executive, Darrell Graddy, as chief strategy officer. Graddy spent eight years in Leidos involved in business development and project management and also spent 30 years in management roles at Lockheed Martin, Boston Government Services said in the press release. According to the release, Graddy […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, coming out of a maintenance outage, received 23 shipments of transuranic waste during the last half of March, according to online data. Because of the extended maintenance outage, which kept the underground salt mine offline all of February, shipment only resumed March 15. The […]

Inés Triay, one-time head of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, will discuss the hexavalent chromium plume at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico this week. Triay, currently interim dean of the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University, is leading an expert review team on the longstanding chromium plume […]

Kathryn Huff will leave the Department of Energy on May 3, only days before what would have concluded her third year at the top of the Office of Nuclear Energy. Huff shared the news in an email, which the Exchange Monitor saw on Monday. Her departure was first reported by Politico. Mike Goff, Huff’s deputy, […]

A Canadian municipality this week planned another step towards letting its citizens choose whether to host a deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel.  On Tuesday, the seven-member Council of the Corporation of the Municipality of South Bruce was scheduled to vote on the last procedural step needed to approve a ballot question about the […]

While the Department of Energy issued a request for qualifications for potential developers of solar projects at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, DOE expects to hold an information day soon on other carbon-free energy projects that would take longer to permit and build. The request for qualifications, published in March, supports DOE’s goal […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Monday planned to finish low-flying helicopter flights measuring radiation levels over the Boston Marathon route, the agency said in a press release. As it often does ahead of big-crowd events in public places, the agency’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team will measure radiation levels along the route to create a […]

A New Mexico resident is suing the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories for slander, defamation, violation of the Freedom of Information Act and — causing the breakup of his 28-year marriage. William Gardner, who is representing himself, filed the action against DOE and Sandia last month. Gardner claims DOE falsely accused him of criminal […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 15-18: United States Nuclear Industry Council, Advanced Reactors Summit. Thompson Hotel Houston, Houston, Texas. Agenda and registration online. 17: Hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee. “To examine the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration atomic […]

Republican Jerrod Sessler, who is again mounting a primary challenge to Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), picked up an expected albeit influential endorsement Friday from former president and presumptive GOP 2024 presidential nominee Donald Trump. Newhouse, who has used his House Appropriations Committee post to push for greater nuclear cleanup funding for the Department of Energy’s […]

The Amentum-led prime at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee told a federal appeals’ court this week its COVID-19 vaccination mandate fulfilled a contractual obligation to take “reasonable precautions” to protect worker health. UCOR’s contract with DOE, awarded in July 2010, required the Amentum-Jacobs joint venture to “take all reasonable precautions to […]

New Mexico and the Department of Energy will get until July 8 to continue settlement talks on revising a 2016 consent order governing legacy waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a federal court said this week. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar issued a Monday order extending the timeline following the latest joint status […]

Party-line divisions about future spent nuclear fuel policies emerged in a Wednesday House hearing, during which one lawmaker said work on the issue could stretch into the next Congress. “I’m not for interim storage,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said during the hearing of the House Energy climate, and grid security subcommittee, which he chairs. “I […]

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) last week called on House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring to set a vote on S.3853, a bill to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, before it expires June 7. The Senate has done its job, Bush said, passing the bill by more than a two-thirds margin […]

The company that was to decommission the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan inappropriately withdrew more than $160 million from the plant’s decommissioning trust fund and did not pay it back, environmental and anti-nuclear activists said Wednesday in a meeting with NRC staff. The activists said Wednesday that they had identified in public reports filed […]