Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have started the two-year effort to carve out a new underground panel for transuranic waste disposal at the salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., the department said Tuesday. In late December, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime Salado Isolation Mining Contractors made its first cut into […]

The Air Force is examining how to reduce the massive civil works project costs that make up a significant part of the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel future ICBM program, service officials said Wednesday. The service last week informed Congress of a 37% unit cost Nunn-McCurdy program breach — an increase in unit cost per missile […]

A Department of Energy environmental contractor has finished preparing the Integrated Disposal Facility at the Hanford Site in Washington to store canisters of solidified low-level radioactive waste beginning in 2025, DOE said Tuesday. The Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF) was built in 2006 at the center of the Hanford complex. Now, the Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission started an environmental review of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s plan to keep California’s last nuclear power plant open until 2030, the agency announced Wednesday. The commission plans an online public meeting about the proposed review on Feb. 1 and an in-person meeting at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Luis […]

David Bowen, the top state regulator assigned to the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, has accepted a new job within the Washington Department of Ecology, the state agency said Tuesday. Bowen, who has been with Ecology since 2016 and led the Nuclear Waste Program since December 2020, has been appointed director of the agency’s central […]

Industry will wait at least until May before seeing the rationale Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff used to justify parts of a coming rule to expand disposal options for Greater-Than-Class-C radioactive waste, officials said Tuesday in an online public meeting. The two-hour, online-only meeting was the latest in a long string of opportunities for the public […]

The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, offline since September, should start heating up next month and resume treating sodium-bearing radioactive waste in March, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The extended outage at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), held in part to replace carbon beds used to remove […]

Despite all-out war in Ukraine, renewed nuclear tensions between Russia, China and the U.S., climate change and a host of other alarming global concerns, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists this year kept its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight. A metaphorical device ticking away toward the end of the world, as assessed by members […]

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled a longtime scientist and manager at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories was not effectively fired by the prime contractor when given only 24 hours to decide whether to retire. A three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit ruled Friday Robert Hwang was not “constructively terminated” […]

Two Republican Senators, both senior members of influential defense committees, on Friday published an op-ed airing concerns that U.S. nuclear modernization is lagging behind its adversaries, particularly the LGM-35 Sentinel. Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) the top Republican on the SASC Strategic […]

The Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio plans to extend by up to a year an existing business deal with a New Mexico-based uranium enrichment services company, according to a federal online procurement notice. DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office plans to extend the existing agreement with Louisiana Energy Services, so that it expires on Feb. […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff were scheduled to hold a virtual public meeting Tuesday about the long-awaited combined rulemaking covering low-level and Greater-Than-Class-C radioactive waste. The meeting will stream online with a telephone dial-in option, according to a notice the commission posted on its website. NRC staff once thought they would submit their proposed rule to […]

A stop work order, issued after a tool basket fell about 2,150 feet down the utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, was lifted last month, according to a recent safety watchdog report. The stop work order triggered by the Nov. 20 accident was partly lifted Dec. 16, […]

Representatives of Holtec International and its ex-chief financial officer will not see each other in court until February because the former employee’s lawyer had a conflict, according to a filing last week in a New Jersey court. Kevin O’Rourke sued Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., in June, but the company in December said that news stories and […]

About a year after it released a draft of the document, the National Nuclear Security Administration published a final environmental review of its plant to dispose of dozens of tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium. The nuclear weapons agency published its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program (SPDP) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on […]

Here is an event related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: January 22: Meeting: The Department of Energy is hosting a public meeting on the Los Alamos National Laboratory chromium plume starting at 6 p.m. Mountain Time at Cities of Gold Hotel and Casino Ballroom, 10 Cities […]

A federal judge in East Tennessee granted a request Thursday by the cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site to delay more proceedings in a COVID-19 lawsuit until a higher court decides if the contractor is shielded from the suit. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley ruled that Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge […]

Workers for United Cleanup Oak Ridge, the environmental prime at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee,  are reporting to work at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time this morning due to lingering icy road conditions, according to a social media post. Also at Oak Ridge, the Y-12 National Security Complex is resuming a normal schedule although the […]

The Department of Energy is taking applications until Feb. 12 for a new nuclear cleanup field office manager to replace Michael Mikolanis at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to a recent online notice. Mikolanis is leaving by March to become the top DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) executive at the […]

Michael Lempke is now leading Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Australia business, where he will shepherd the shipbuilder and nuclear-site manager’s portion of the tripartite AUKUS agreement between the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Lempke, most recently president of the company’s Nuclear and Environmental Services group, took the post on Jan.1, Huntington Ingalls (HII) said in a statement […]

Use of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site for carbon-free energy will not include small modular reactors, a local manager for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, told a federal advisory panel Wednesday. “Small modular reactors are not an option” for the Nevada site, “David Bowman, manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

Wintry weather continues to bedevil parts of the Department of Energy weapons complex in Washington state and Tennessee. Most workers were sent home Wednesday morning from DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington due to freezing rain and an overnight swing shift was canceled, according to the agency. Regular work hours resumed Thursday although drivers were advised […]

Congress on Thursday approved a spending bill to keep agencies including the Department of Energy open until March 1, according to a schedule posted by the Democrat majority. The Senate passed the bill 77-to-18 on Tuesday afternoon. The House followed quickly after, approving the month-and-a-half stopgap budget 314-to-108.  The bill now goes to President Joe […]

The prime contractor of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory wants a federal judge to dismiss a long-running lawsuit by two employees, a married couple, who the contractor said balked at getting COVID-19 vaccines but suffered no real damages. The motion for summary judgment and supporting materials were filed by the management joint […]

Northrop Grumman has conducted a live, static-fire test of a stage-two solid rocket motor for the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile at the Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tullahoma, Tenn., the company announced Jan. 16. Northrop is the Air Force’s Sentinel prime contractor and is responsible for building the solid rocket motor for […]