Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said last week it need not hear oral arguments in order to make a ruling in a case involving the Department of Energy’s COVID-19 vaccination policy at the Hanford Site in Washington state. “The court is of the unanimous opinion that […]

After delaying the decision late last month, a Senate committee was scheduled Wednesday to decide whether to recommend Jeffrey Baran for another five years as a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had planned to vote on Baran’s renomination during a May 31 business meeting but did not, […]

Members of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee are proposing to withhold funding for retirement of the W76-2 warhead unless the military and National Nuclear Security Administration can prove there is no need for the lower-yield submarine-launched weapon. The proposal is included in the subcommittee’s markup of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), […]

California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control could start taking public comments as early as this fall on groundwater cleanup for the Department of Energy’s area of the sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory, according to a report released Thursday. The California Agency on Thursday issued its long-awaited Final Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) for the 2,850-acre […]

Last week’s breach of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine threatens the stability of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest, by draining a critical source of coolant water, the International Atomic Energy Agency said last weekend.  The breach of the dam early on June 6 caused a rapid drop in the water levels of […]

The Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce, which takes an active interest in the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in McCracken County, Ky., has been awarded a $2-million grant to study future use of the agency’s gaseous diffusion plant. The $2-million financial assistance act, consistent with the fiscal 2023 federal budget, will go toward community studies […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories have successfully performed a second joint abnormal thermal environment test for the W80-4 Life Extension Program, the labs recently announced.  Carried out April 5 at Sandia’s Cross Wind Test Facility in New Mexico, this abnormal thermal environment test, or ATE-2, was a fast-heat, fully engulfing system-level fuel […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 11-14: Annual Meeting, American Nuclear Society. Marriott Indianapolis Downtown. Indianapolis, Ind. Those who wish to attend may register online. 13: Conference: Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association (ETEBA) 2023 Savannah River Federal Business Opportunities Forum. Crowne […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV — Spurred by audience members and a moderator, a pair of radioactive-waste-disposal professionals critiqued the nearly 40 year-old U.S. low-level radioactive waste compacts here on Wednesday. “There’s no continuity here between the compacts,” John McCormick, founder and vice president of Bionomics, Inc., Oak Ridge, Tenn., said here at the Exchange Monitor’s annual RadWaste […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted one-time approval for the Department of Energy to return a problem container of transuranic waste with expired paperwork to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant parking lot in New Mexico. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission authorized the return in a June 2 letter […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Information Management has plans to establish a $6.4 million information technology center to consolidate two existing facilities in the Washington, D.C. area.  The NNSA began modernizing its information technology (IT) facilities with its fiscal year 2022 budget in order to establish data center space and “increase capacity for […]

Washington and Oregon officials agreed Tuesday that concrete-like grout could be used instead of glass to solidify a significant portion of Hanford’s radioactive liquid waste, as long as the grouted waste is taken off-site. Suzanne Dahl, tank waste manager for the Washington Ecology Department and Matt Hendrickson, her counterpart at the Oregon Department of Energy, […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV. — The manager of the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad, N.M., field office expects the major new ventilation system for the transuranic waste disposal site could start up sometime in 2024. “Preliminary commissioning” work on the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System should start this calendar year, said Mark Bollinger, who heads the Carlsbad Field […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV. — By June 30, the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office expects to provide the Texas attorney general with a “detailed schedule” for retrieving boxes of transuranic waste stranded at a private disposal site in Andrews County for nearly a decade. In a May 10 letter to Phillip Ledbetter, managing enforcement lawyer with […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV — The Department of Energy should in June provide a timeline for removing long-stranded drums of transuranic waste from a commercial storage site in Andrews County, a Texas regulator said here Tuesday.  “They are moving forward with getting the building ready to eventually move the waste,” Ashley Forbes, deputy director of the radioactive […]

Citing potentially fatal procedural flaws on both sides, the Department of Justice on Tuesday asked a federal judge to suspend a lawsuit over a recently awarded liquid waste contract and let the Department of Energy try to fix the mess. Hanging in the balance is the $45-billion Department of Energy Hanford Integrated Tanks Contract at […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV. — Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge will break ground this summer on a new low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) told Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit here Tuesday. “I’m proud to announce that on Aug. 2 in Oak Ridge we are going to […]

Antinuclear activists and state lawmakers on Tuesday demonstrated outside the New York governor’s office, demanding that she sign a bill to outlaw dumping of irradiated waste water into the Hudson River from the shuttered Indian Point Nuclear Energy Center. Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit founded by activist Wenonah Hauter of Virginia, publicized the […]

Lewis Monroe was to replace Jeff Johnson as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s associate administrator for defense nuclear security, a source said Tuesday. As head of the Office of Defense Nuclear Security at agency headquarters in Washington, Monroe will be responsible for physical and information security across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) network of […]

The winner of a massive Department of Energy liquid-waste cleanup contractor in Washington state is trying to turn the tables on a rival who has argued in court that the awardee was ineligible for the work. The winner, BWX Technologies (BWXT)-led Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure, told the U.S. Court of Claims for the […]

Antinuclear activists want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up oral arguments in a federal lawsuit aimed at blocking a life extension for California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant. The groups, San Luis Obsipo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth and Environmental Working Group, asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals bump the scheduled briefings […]

After being down for a while last week for upkeep on a major component, a $1.4-billion facility to treat sodium-bearing waste at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory is back in operation, an agency spokesperson said by email Monday. The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) “continues to process 100% rad waste,” the DOE spokesperson […]

With a deficit deal in place, the House and Senate now plan to write the annual bill authorizing budgets for Department of Energy defense-nuclear programs by June 23. Disrupted by negotiations over spending levels and U.S. borrowing authority, markups of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are now set to resume next week, according to […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV — Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water subcommittee, will join speakers from industry and the Department of Energy in kicking off Exchange Monitor’s retooled Radwaste Summit 2.0. Fleischmann, who will speak remotely from Washington, D.C., will headline a roundtable discussion of the future of collaboration on […]

The Department of Energy on Monday released a draft solicitation for a contract under which it could acquire up to 145 metric tons of high assay low-enriched uranium to help develop new nuclear reactor designs. Also on Monday, the agency released a draft solicitation for converting the energy-dense uranium into reactor fuel. DOE did not […]