Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 The agency filed an unpublished version of the decision last week.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 […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory officially closed out its remediation of a stretch of public road, previously thought to be clean, where contamination was discovered in 2020, the contractor said Monday. In February, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) said the investigation and cleanup of contaminated soil […]

In a Monday memo, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission effectively killed a proposed licensing path for advanced nuclear reactors that industry and some lawmakers said was too burdensome. The decision was a step in the commission’s Part 53 rulemaking that will create a new method for licensing a technically diverse group of reactor designs legally classified […]

Defense and civilian nuclear programs at the Department of Energy would all get raises for the 2024 fiscal year under a compromise appropriators package, released Sunday, that congressional leaders and the White House have said they support.  DOE and other federal agencies are still operating under a short-term continuing resolution that holds spending to 2023 […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: March  06: Meeting: A hybrid meeting on cleanup priorities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site will be held starting at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time at the Gallery Room of the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate […]

The Department of Energy’s decision to re-award a potential $45-billion contract for liquid radioactive waste management at the Hanford Site in Washington state to a BWX Technologies-led group could put the company at the helm of two major nuclear-weapons cleanups. DOE announced Friday the re-award of the Integrated Tank Disposition contract to Hanford Tank Waste […]

The Department of Energy officially said Friday it is seeking competitive bids from qualified parties to help develop carbon-free electric power projects of at least 200 megawatts at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Proposals are due April 15, tax day, in response to the request for qualifications  published March 1 in the system for […]

Bidders on a Department of Energy contract, potentially worth $3 billion, for Phase 1B remediation work at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, now have until March 11 to submit proposals. The prior deadline was today, March 4. Jacobs-led CH2M Hill-BWXT West Valley is the incumbent. Its contract, valued at less than […]

All shifts were scheduled to report normally to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, on Thursday, despite several wildfires still raging north of the site.  The plant’s website shows normal scheduling for the day, swing and graveyard shifts on Thursday. Workers were recalled Wednesday after operations at the National Nuclear Security […]