Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has brought online the second melter at the multibillion-dollar facility designed to solidify liquid radioactive waste into a solid glass-like form, the agency said this week. DOE said in a Tuesday press release that the second 300-ton melter at Bechtel’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant has […]

Sam Randazzo, the disgraced former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, is dead, media in Ohio reported Tuesday. Multiple reports said that Randazzo’s body was found late Tuesday morning in a Columbia warehouse that he owned. The Franklin County Coroners Office, which confirmed the death, said the case is a suspected suicide, according […]

In a legal brief filed in federal court, Department of Energy contractors said a Pike County, Ohio man waited too long, 15 years after being diagnosed with cancer, and more than four years after a local school closed, to allege the contractors contaminated the area around the Portsmouth Site. Plaintiff Joshua Shaw blames contractors at […]

The governors of Arizona and New Mexico wrote the White House Council on Environmental Quality this week urging the federal government to prioritize cleanup of old uranium mines in the Southwest, and appoint a regional coordinator. There are 650 abandoned uranium mines spread across the two states. Many date to the 1950s, before implementation of […]

The director of the Idaho national laboratory was one of four witnesses set to testify Wednesday before a House subcommittee in a hearing about spent nuclear fuel. The House Energy climate, and grid security subcommittee was set to gavel in at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time in Washington for a hearing titled “American Nuclear Energy Expansion: […]

The Department of Energy plans to use Aptim, one of nine companies selected in a national solicitation in 2020, as its decommissioning and demolition contractor for Building 281 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. DOE published a justification for not doing additional competitive bidding for the work, worth up to $22.1 million, in […]

The centerpiece of a federal neutron research complex in Maryland will use highly enriched uranium fuel until at least 2030, according to a recent regulatory filing. That’s because the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration have yet to develop a fuel the National Bureau of Standards Reactor (NBSR) can use, according […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned in June to award a one-year contract to study a pilot defense-uranium enrichment plant based on technology developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the agency said Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency narrowed the timeline for the award in a question-and-answer document published on a […]

The Department of Energy is giving bidders on the $2.9-billion Portsmouth / Paducah Project Office (PPPO) Operations and Site Mission Support contract until April 17 to tweak their proposals, sources tell Exchange Monitor. The contract will cover running depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plants in Ohio and Kentucky, among other things. April 17 is the deadline […]

The Department of Energy’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is asking the New Mexico Environment Department for certain permit modifications, including approval of four new shielded containers suitable for carrying remote-handled transuranic waste. DOE and Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors filed the Hazardous Waste Facility Permit modification document with the state March […]

A federal district judge in Washington state has set a May 16 scheduling conference to start addressing pre-trial issues in a False Claims Act complaint against the Department of Energy’s Leidos-led landlord contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state. U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian scheduled the video conference to start determining issues where the […]

Drones on Saturday attacked parts of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday in a statement. The U.N. nuclear-power agency did not say who was responsible for the attacks on the facility, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and has been under Russia’s control since the […]

Current and former nuclear weapons workers can learn about federal occupational illness compensation during a Department of Labor information meeting Wednesday in Portsmouth, Ohio. The meeting at the Morris University Center is designed to inform nuclear workers and their families about the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, according to an April 4 press […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. April 10: Hearing, House Energy and Commerce climate and grid security subcommittee. “American Nuclear Energy Expansion: Spent Fuel Policy and Innovation.” Rayburn House Office Building Room, Room 2322,  Washington. Streaming online at the committee’s website. 10: Meeting: […]

Site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security planned a fundraiser Thursday to help cover some of the damages caused by recent wildfires near the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, the joint venture said in a press release. The fires, which drew the attention of major news outlets, forced Pantex, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear-weapons service center, to briefly shut […]

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee plans a hearing next week on spent fuel management for the U.S. nuclear power plants. The hearing, dubbed “American Nuclear Energy Expansion: Spent Fuel Policy and Innovation,” is set for Wednesday April 10 at 10:30 a.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building, according to a press release. The session […]

The cleanup prime at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee should not be forced to hand over COVID-19 vaccination data for 100 people uninvolved with litigation filed by three fired employees, the company said this week in legal papers. Plaintiffs Carlton Speer, Melana Dennis and Zachariah Duncan, terminated by Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) […]

The separation of the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee took a baby step forward this week with the opening of separate federal field offices for the nuclear-weapons production sites. Consolidated Nuclear Security, still the joint operations contractor for the two sites, announced the split on Tuesday in a […]

It is up to a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., to decide what comes next in an advocacy group’s lawsuit to force an additional environmental review for a hiking trail near what used to be the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats plant in Colorado. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly heard oral arguments last month […]

Thom Mason, the directory of the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is scheduled to answer questions about laboratory operations this evening. Lab employees, family members and New Mexico residents are invited to ask questions of Mason between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Mountain Time, Wednesday, April 3, according to a […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District is extending by a week, to April 11, its deadline for responses to its request for information for a small business to perform environmental remediation at the Deepwater site in New Jersey. The original response deadline was April 4 for parties interested in doing cleanup at the […]

A couple of Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites could experience the total or near-total eclipse of the sun this coming Monday, April 8. Paducah, Ky., home to DOE’s Paducah Site, is the only weapons complex cleanup site in the “totality” path, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Buffalo, N.Y., which is […]