Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Massachusetts on Monday forbade Holtec International from discharging irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant, but the company could still get a federal permit to do so. The state Department of Environmental Protection published the decision in a tentative determination to deny Holtec’s application to modify a discharge permit the […]

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, will acquire bankrupt construction company Williams Industrial Services Group, Atlanta, for about $60 million, the Utah-based company said Monday in a press release. Williams has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The company specializes in construction of heavy industrial infrastructure. EnergySolutions […]

The Department of Energy wants a domestic supply of high-assay, low-enriched uranium for use in nuclear reactors and for other purposes and is inviting industry to hear about the program next month.  Ahead of an “anticipated action to acquire” high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU), the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy is holding an industry […]

The first melter at the Department of Energy’s waste-solidification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state has reached its operating temperature of 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, the agency and contractor Bechtel National said late Monday. The milestone for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) completed the heat up process that started June 24, DOE […]

Bechtel National’s $14.9-billion contract to build the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state was updated last month to keep the company on the job into September 2024, which is still before before the plant is expected to start solidifying low-level radioactive waste.  An Aug. 31 contract […]

A DOE official may share details about the National Nuclear Security Administration’s planned takeover of the Savannah River Site in 2025 during a public meeting on Tuesday, the official said Monday. That was the word from the No. 2 DOE Office of Environmental Management field office manager for Savannah River, Edwin Deshong, during a Monday […]

Using leftover appropriations, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget for fiscal year 2024 would be essentially what the agency requested, if a proposal approved last week by Senate appropriators becomes law. An energy and water appropriations bill passed Thursday by the Senate Appropriations would provide a net appropriation for the NRC of about $940 million. That […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 24: Meeting: The DOE’s Citizens Advisory Board for the Savannah River Site holds a hybrid meeting starting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. The session, which will be streamed via Youtube, will originate from Augusta Technical College—Waynesboro, […]

Parties fighting over a $45-billion Department of Energy radioactive tank waste cleanup contract at the Hanford Site in Washington say there is a good chance of ending up back before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and, with that in mind, want the judge to hang onto key records. The parties made the motion in […]

Hensel Phelps, a construction subcontractor working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, recently completed concrete placements for four warehouses that will provide more than a football field’s worth of additional storage capacity and workspace.  Approximately 5,000 cubic yards of concrete were laid for the foundation on June 15, a milestone the lab announced […]

International Atomic Energy Agency officials have carried out additional inspections at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant over the past week without finding any heavy military equipment, explosives or mines, but they are still awaiting access to the rooftops of the reactor buildings, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on July 20. During visits to portions […]

An advisory board recommended Nevada National Security Site proceed with its current plans to sample potentially contaminated groundwater in the location’s northwest corner.  The Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board unanimously recommended Thursday that the site continue its plan to sample the Pahute Mesa for tritium-laced water in fiscal 2025. The 1,355-square-mile site has already sampled […]

The Department of Energy’s Northern New Mexico Advisory Board, which provides input on cleanup issues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, asked the acting head of the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management last week about expanding its role to include the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. William (Ike) White, the senior adviser for DOE’s […]

Government conferences can rarely boast of a speech by a well-known actor featured in Home Box Office’s series, including ‘The Wire’ — except maybe when the actor has a brother who is a Department of Energy manager. The DOE Small Business Forum & Expo last week in New Orleans included a keynote address from actor […]

The Department of Energy and New Mexico should work with a third-party mediator “to build trust” on legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Congressional watchdog reported Wednesday. Without “clearer communication that leads to smoother relationships with the regulators and the public,” DOE and the New Mexico Environment Department could risk, “further delaying […]

The recent unprecedented expansion of the Los Alamos National Laboratory workforce will continue for at least another year before leveling out at around 2,0000 employees, a senior lab official told the Los Alamos County Council on Tuesday. All told, there are 17,244 people employed at Los Alamos in various capacities from professional National Nuclear Security […]

The Senate’s 2024 National Defense Authorization Act includes the text of a bill that would extend nuclear-industry indemnity for catastrophic accidents and begin reforms at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A spokesperson for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where the nuclear-reform bill originated, said in a statement Wednesday morning that the measure would be […]

The Department of Energy said Tuesday the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico started cutting recently dug-up corrugated metal pipes into sections small enough for shipment to the agency’s underground disposal site for transuranic waste. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) workers are using hydraulic shears to cut […]

The story “Amentum selects Johnson as new CFO” [ July, 17, 2023] should have reported that Travis Johnson recently joined the company.

The Department of Energy first discovered more contaminated soil under Building 324 at the Hanford Site in Washington state last August and suspended work on stabilizing the structure in April, DOE said this month in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency. The timeline was laid out in a July 5 letter to David Einan, […]

Over the next decade, the U.S. will spend an estimated $756 billion on modernizing and maintaining its current and future nuclear forces, or about $75 billion per year, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office found.  Looking at the 10 years from 2023 to 2032, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), found that U.S. spending […]

The Department of Energy is still considering how and whether it will help bail out a shuttered power plant in Michigan, a senior agency official testified Tuesday in Congress. Plant owner Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., seeks a roughly $1 billion loan for DOE and said this spring that the federal agency could conditionally approve the […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management intends to issue no-bid business to Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas to relocate containers of long-stranded transuranic waste to a new above-ground storage area at the commercial waste site. “The estimated value of the resulting order is not expected to exceed $16,500,000 ($16.5 million),” DOE’s […]

The House version of the 2024 defense authorization act includes funding to develop a nuclear-tipped seal-launched cruise missile, and the program will make it into law despite the White House’s desire to kill it, according to Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). Wittman, who is vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, chair of the tactical […]

With last week’s award of the Department of Energy’s $5.87-billion environmental remediation contract for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio to an Amentum-led team, two industry sources expect a companion contract is imminent for operations of that property as well as the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The sources, executives who work for different government contractors, also […]