Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Energy Tuesday issued requests for information from potential developers of carbon-free power projects at the Idaho National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. At Savannah River, four tracts of 2,000 acres or more on relatively flat land are available for potential clean energy projects, according to DOE’s Oct. 17 […]

A bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday went public with a request that President Joe Biden (D) compel the Navy to release a study they say is critical to oversight of a trilateral agreement to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines. “We understand that a Submarine Industrial Base 2025 (SIB-25) study from the U.S. Navy […]

The vice president of Holtec’s small modular reactor business is excited about the prospect of developing such units at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan. “The details remain [to be worked out] as far as the exact timing and the financial conditions,” Tom Marcille, vice president and chief nuclear officer at Holtec International SMR, said […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Buffalo District held a public meeting Tuesday in New York state about planned cleanup of the Niagara Falls Storage Site. The site, to be cleaned up under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), includes a 10-acre Interim Waste Containment Structure, which holds radiologically contaminated debris, the Corps […]

Holtec Decommissioning International moved all the spent fuel at the New York’s shuttered Indian Point Nuclear Energy Center into dry storage, a state agency announced Monday. In total, the company has filled 127 concrete casks with 3,998 spent fuel assemblies that are now stored at the Buchanan, N.Y., plant’s independent spent fuel storage installations, according […]

When Jessie Hill Roberson walks out of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s office for the last time as a federal employee on Wednesday, it will mark the end of a 40-plus year career in the nuclear field. It also means the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), created by Congress in 1988 as a […]

The most expensive item needed to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan is a new steam generator that will cost half a billion dollars, according to a federal grant application from Holtec International obtained by an antinuclear group and distributed Monday to the media. The Washington-based group Beyond Nuclear obtained Holtec’s 42-page application for […]

Future arms control agreements will be non-treaty accords that begin with “stealthy” conversations between diplomats willing to buck the status quo, a retired State Department official said in Washington at a government-sponsored forum named for him. Even before China began expanding its nuclear arsenal and Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time this century, it […]

The four members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were scheduled to appear publicly on Thursday for a brief procedural vote about a California utility’s request to dismiss an antinuclear group’s request for a hearing about the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. In what is known as an affirmation session, the commission members will briefly appear in […]

A Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel will hear arguments Wednesday in San Francisco in an employment discrimination case filed by Robert Hwang against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor for Sandia National Laboratories in California. Hwang is appealing an August 2022 ruling by a U.S. Magistrate judge who rejected the scientist’s contention that […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., had another busy month by post-2014 standards, receiving 48 shipments, with the vast majority coming from Idaho National Laboratory. According to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)’s public website, the underground salt mine received 43 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste from the Idaho lab, […]

Fred Bailly joined Southern California Edison as vice president of nuclear decommissioning, according to Bailly’s LinkedIn profile. Bailly will be responsible for decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. He joins Southern California Edison from Westinghouse, where he was most recently vice president of decommissioning services. He was with Westinghouse for about two years […]

Despite worries within the nuclear security enterprise of “massive uncertainties” in its delivery date, the Scorpius x-ray imager might actually be ready later this decade, a spokesperson for the Sandia National Laboratories said last week. “The deterministic date…is to have Scorpius operational before the end of calendar 2027, with subcritical experiments to start in calendar […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. October 16-17: 2023 James Timbie Forum on Arms Control and Nonproliferation. U.S. Department of State Bureaus of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance; International Security and Nonproliferation. Register online to attend. In-person attendance is limited and first […]

While assembling a nuclear weapon in mid-September, technicians at the Pantex Plant in Texas crossed a pair of color-coded and labeled wires, an error that made it past a quality control inspection, according to a report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.  During the week of September 15, Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS, which runs […]

Centrus Energy Corp. started enriching energy dense uranium fuel using a new centrifuge cascade at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, the company said Wednesday. Centrus, Bethesda, Md., marked the milestone with a tour of the event that included Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk. The company thinks it will begin retrieving […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission repeatedly failed to ensure the safety of test reactors across the country, including at a government agency in Maryland and a shuttered imaging facility in California whose owner had complained of lax commission oversight, according to a recent report from the agency’s Inspector General. The Inspector General uncovered the lapses by […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Wednesday it will not lump together litigation over a Department of Energy liquid waste contract potentially worth $45 billion with a separate government procurement case. In a brief order, the appeals circuit rejected a joint motion by BWX-Technologies-led Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure and […]

The last hydrogen fluoride cylinder was recently removed from the Y‑12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., clearing the way for a new uranium-purification technology for nuclear weapons that could switch on in 2024. Hydrogen fluoride was used in an antiquated wet-chemistry conversion and purification process for making enriched uranium metal at the plant’s […]

The Department of Energy and its New Mexico regulator could be close to reaching a deal to replace the 2016 Compliance Order on Consent that governs most cleanup at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a federal court filing this week. The parties Tuesday sought and received an extension from a federal judge in […]

New Mexico officials on Tuesday briefed state lawmakers near Carlsbad, N.M., about enforcing a new state law that prohibits storage of spent nuclear fuel in the Land of Enchantment. Passed in March, the law, SB 53, prohibits a state agency from granting permits vital to the operation of Holtec International’s proposed consolidated interim storage facility […]

A new team of nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant on Oct. 4, the twelfth rotation since the agency established a permanent presence at the site in September 2022. Teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been working with Russian and Ukrainian officials, as well […]

A federal district court in Ohio has assigned a Columbus attorney to act as mediator in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site. John Camillus was assigned Oct. 2 to be mediator in the case, surrounding the death of a 13-year-old Piketon, Ohio boy, Braden […]

Jacobs’ government contracting segment, which is up for sale, accounted for 42% of the entire company’s business in fiscal year 2022, according to a recent investor presentation. Another Department of Energy weapons complex contractor, Amentum, is reportedly in the running to acquire Jacobs’ contracting business. There are at least two other suitors in the running, […]

The decommissioning site of a barge used for more than 50 years to service nuclear-powered Navy ships appears safe for unrestricted release, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in documents posted online Tuesday.  The Surface Ship Support Barge’s decommissioning site in Mobile, Ala., is not an NRC-licensed site, but if it were, it “would have met […]