Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina is the latest Department of Energy nuclear property to issue a request for qualifications for carbon-free electricity projects. The request for qualifications published Monday March 11 by DOE particularly targets solar power generation. Responses to the RFQ are due before noon Eastern Time on April 19. DOE’s Cleanup […]

PHOENIX — Unwilling states could be forced to regulate Greater-Than-Class-C waste under a pending federal rule change, the head of an interest group for states that regulate low-level radioactive waste said here. States that took on responsibility for regulating low-level radioactive waste under agreements with the NRC “are all very, very concerned about what GTCC […]

PHOENIX— A maintenance outage at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which started Jan. 26, concluded Monday, a site manager said Monday. Shipments of defense-related transuranic waste to the underground salt mine should resume Friday, Tammy Hobbes, vice president of site prime contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors said on the […]

The Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory is ready to proceed with installation of a small microreactor project capable of providing electric power for about 10 homes while providing the agency with the lab with a means of studying small reactor designs, DOE said in a Monday press release. The design team for the Microreactor […]

PHOENIX — Nuclear waste repositories planned in Finland, Sweden and Switzerland will help the public accept that nuclear power is safe, the head of the Nuclear Energy Agency said here Monday. “This is going to help everybody,” William Magwood, director-general for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency, said Monday during prepared […]

Funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program would rise and funding for its nuclear-waste-cleanup programs would fall slightly year-over-year, under the fiscal year 2025 budget request President Joe Biden (D) released Monday. The Department of Energy had not released detailed budget justification documents as of Monday afternoon, but according to a document published Monday […]

PHOENIX— Contaminated old buildings at U.S. nuclear weapons sites are being torn down and, internationally, nuclear power is increasingly seen as a legitimate source of carbon-free electricity, participants in the Waste Management Symposia heard Monday. “For people familiar with EM [the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management], there is no better illustration of progress […]

The U.S. Department of Energy needs to improve how it studies the long-term storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel, according to a February report to Congress and the secretary of energy by the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board  The board performs independent technical and scientific peer review of DOE’s management and disposal of high-level radioactive […]

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, said Sunday it acquired Cabrera Services, East Hartford, Conn., a radioactive cleanup company that has contracts with the Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers. EnergySolutions announced the news in a press release shared Sunday with the Exchange Monitor. The release did not specify the financial terms of the […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 10–14: Waste Management Symposia 2024. Phoenix Convention Center. Phoenix. Register online. 12: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 36th Annual Regulatory Information Conference. Bethesda North Marriot Hotel and Conference Center, Rockville, Md. Portions streaming on the NRC’s website. Register […]

PHOENIX — The top cleanup officers from the Department of Energy and other U.S. and international nuclear agencies are on hand here this week for the annual Waste Management Symposia conference. Monday’s morning plenary will begin with comments by William (Ike) White, DOE’s senior adviser for the Office of Environmental Management. He will join other […]

Six national laboratories will split $27.3 million from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to help hasten cleanup of underground radioactive waste at the DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state. In a separate but related development, Congress, in a report appended to a full-year appropriations bill signed Saturday, called for briefings to lawmakers […]

The NNSA intends to grant SHINE Technologies cost-share funding to build and operate a new facility for producing the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) without the use of highly-enriched uranium, according to a March 4 filing in the Federal Register. The agency filed an unpublished version of the decision last week. SHINE received a construction permit […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration stands to see its roughly $24 billion budget request fulfilled under the compromise funding agreement reached by Congress this week.   The bill includes just over $19 billion for NNSA weapons activities and includes a requirement that the agency work with the scientific advisory group JASON to “conduct an assessment of […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has started sampling for radioactive contamination buried deep beneath a subdivision in Florissant, Mo., near Coldwater Creek, the federal organization said Monday. The Corps’ St. Louis District office said in a press release sampling is starting under its Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), in Florissant, about 18 […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has issued a solicitation for a contractor to clean up the DuPont Chambers Works Atomic Energy Commission site in Deepwater, N.J. The Philadelphia District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday issued an updated request for proposals (RFP) to award a five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract under […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Tuesday said he would sign a bill that would extend and expand the federal legislation that financially compensates people harmed by radioactive material used to build the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  “The President believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in […]

The largest nuclear cleanup sites run by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would meet or beat fiscal 2023 funding levels, under the compromise 2024 appropriations bill released over the weekend. At the Hanford Site in Washington state, the former plutonium-making complex that is now DOE’s most expensive cleanup project, the two operational […]

The leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week lauded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for eliminating what industry called a burdensome feature of a planned rule to license advanced nuclear reactors. Sens. Ben Carper (D-Del) and Shelley Capito (W-WVa.), the chair and ranking member of the committee, each released statements Monday praising […]

Federal judges on Tuesday repeatedly questioned claims that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission illegally licensed Holtec International to store spent fuel under contract to the Department of Energy. The long-awaited oral arguments in U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia are part of a lawsuit from 2021 that now includes the anti-nuclear groups […]

During the past calendar year, Bechtel National won $9.5 million, or 92% of a potential $10.3 million, from the Department of Energy for work on the High-Level Waste Facility at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Between Jan. 1, 2023 and Dec. 31, 2023, Bechtel earned 92% of […]

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a vocal advocate of renewing a compensation program for people sickened by radiation exposure stemming from the U.S. nuclear weapons production, plans to bring a local activist on the issue as his guest at the State of the Union address. In a Monday press release, Hawley said Dawn Chapman, co-founder of […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board continues without a quorum for its role as federal safety watchdog for Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities, and the current chair’s term expires this fall. Designed as a five-person panel, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) still has only two members. A Senate committee has approved a […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration wants to hear from entities interested in building a massive, 2,000-acre clean-energy farm to help power the Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas.  In an 18-page request for qualifications published Friday, the NNSA said it will choose one or more companies to develop and construct a facility capable of […]

Department of Energy contractors that have worked at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio last week asked a federal court to throw out the latest complaint by a plaintiff who alleged radioactive contamination escaped from the shuttered gaseous diffusion plant and caused his cancer. The litigation by Joshua Shaw, who blames current and former contractors at […]