Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Energy’s contention that the state of Washington lacks authority to order installation of decontamination showers at a waste disposal site won’t block a larger permit modification for the facility, state and federal agencies agreed last week. “Due to the critical need for the timely execution of Direct-Feed Low Activity Waste at Hanford,” […]

Shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico from Idaho National Laboratory could decline in 2024, according to a recent federal safety board update. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad receives waste drums from the Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP), as […]

The race to build 80 nuclear weapon cores per year is stretching the U.S. supply of gloveboxes used to keep engineers radiation-free while manipulating plutonium and other hazardous materials.  The equipment is becoming difficult to source, Michael Robinson, vice president of project management for Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) earlier this month said at the Energy […]

BWX Technologies on Tuesday took home another $300 million contract from the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program to manufacture nuclear reactor fuel for the Navy’s nuclear-powers submarines and aircraft carriers.  Under the new deal, BWXT subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services of Erwin, Tenn., will manufacture and deliver fuel for the Naval Reactors Program, which supplies propulsion […]

Kathryn Huff, the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, will headline the Cleanup to Clean Energy industry day Wednesday at the agency’s Idaho National Laboratory. Others speakers will include Lance Lacroix, who heads DOE’s Idaho operations office, Idaho National Laboratory director John Wagner, DOE Deputy Director of the Office of Management Ingrid Kolb, […]

In a return to pre-pandemic practice, the Department of Energy said last week it will vet management teams in person for the next $3 billion cleanup contract at the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York. In a special notice, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said it would hold its oral interviews and problem […]

The APTIM-Amentum Alaska Decommissioning joint venture has won a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contract worth $95.5 million over six years to take down an old reactor at Fort Greely, Alaska, Amentum said last week. The Army Corps Baltimore District awarded the contract to decommission and dismantle the SM-1A Reactor Facility, Amentum said in a […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. October 25: Meeting: The Idaho Cleanup Project’s Citizens Advisory Board holds a hybrid meeting starting from 9 a.m. Mountain Time from Sun Valley Resort  at 1 Sun Valley Road, Sun Valley, ID 83353.  To participate virtually, […]

Last week, a team of engineers at the Nevada National Security Site detonated an explosive device underground in hopes of improving the U.S. ability to detect lower-yield nuclear explosions elsewhere in the world.  A National Nuclear Security Administration-led team conducted what the agency called a “subsurface chemical explosion” in the P tunnel in Area 12 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission officially closed the door Thursday on an antinuclear group’s bid to force a hearing about Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s plans to fund upkeep of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s independent spent fuel storage installation. The writing has been on the wall since the summer, when Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) […]

Federal appeals judges on Wednesday heard arguments about whether the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories prime contractor forced out a 25-year scientist and manager by giving him only a day to decide whether to resign or undergo a performance improvement program. Plaintiff Robert Hwang, a Ph. D. formerly at the lab, “was fearful he […]

With long-timer Jessie Hill Roberson’s Wednesday retirement from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the federal government’s independent safety watchdog for nuclear-weapon sites is down to two members. Chair Joyce Connery and Vice Chair Thomas Summers are the only two active members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), leaving the nominally five-member panel […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s drive to make new nuclear-weapon cores has delayed disposal of old ones, according to an agency statement emailed to the Exchange Monitor on Tuesday. Amid the expansion of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility and early work on South Carolina’s planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, which combined […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could counter a dramatic spike in its environmental liability by using new management practices at the 19 nuclear-weapon sites it is cleaning up, Congress’ investigative arm said this week. The secretary of the Army should also ensure the Corps develops a lifecycle cost estimate for the Formerly Utilized Sites […]

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, […]