Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Department of Energy debriefs were held last week for the $45-billion Integrated Tank Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state awarded recently to a team of BWX Technologies, Amentum and Fluor, sources told the Exchange Monitor. As a result, any bid protest should be filed with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) early this week, […]

As expected, the Department of Energy formally extended the Huntington Ingalls-led legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory by three years, according to an agency document published online this week. The Los Alamos legacy cleanup business held by Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) has been extended through April 29, 2026, according […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state only lost 12 acres to wildfire on the 580-square-mile property during 2022, due partly to controlled burns and other risk reduction steps overseen by the Leidos-led landlord contractor, the agency said Tuesday. By contrast, in June 2020, a wildfire started by lightning charred 5,000 acres on […]

Problems with components are mostly responsible for the two-year delay to the warhead for the next nuclear-tipped air-launched cruise missile, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration told lawmakers Wednesday.  There are “few components that are pacing the schedule” for the W80-4, Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) told the […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm touted big liquid-waste-cleanup milestones in Idaho and Washington state in testimony Wednesday at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Though the fiscal year 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is about flat overall, tweaks to the 2024 proposal support a big “a ramp up […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration cold-shouldered Saudi Arabia recently when the Kingdom sought U.S. help establishing a civilian nuclear power industry, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in a hearing Wednesday. “I believe it’s imperative that we have that relationship with Saudi,” Manchin told the heads of the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security […]

The White House sent Jeff Baran’s nomination for another five years on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Senate, where the chair of the committee in charge of vetting the commissioner has vowed swift advancement, if possible. The Joe Biden administration officially nominated Baran on Tuesday, according to a White House press release, fulfilling the […]

In the first of a trio of reports after its testing last fall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Louis District said Tuesday the now-closed Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Mo., is safe, from a radiological standpoint. The 460-page report “provides additional data from our structural surveys and sampling, all of which have confirmed […]

The Department of Energy on Tuesday published a new report about the agency’s plans for finding a willing host for a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. The document, which puts a federal interim storage site some 10 or 15 years in the future, assuming Congress changes existing law to make such a […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, former two-term governor of Michigan, will headline a fundraising event for the South Carolina Democratic Party Friday evening in Columbia, S.C., roughly an hour’s drive from Aiken, where the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is located. “She is not on official travel” but personal travel, and the federal government […]

An April 19 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing article [ECA opposes WIPP restrictions sought by New Mexico regulators] should have reported the Mayor of Carlsbad, N.M. Nuclear Task Force in its public comments said the New Mexico Environment Department engaged in “chest thumping” by certain restrictions included a draft permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. 

An indictment was filed last Thursday against a Hanford subcontractor accused of stealing $1.313 million in COVID relief money from the federal government. Filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington, the indictment charged Wilson Stevenson III, 44, owner of BNL Technical Services, with 11 counts of fraud. The fraud charges carry maximum sentences of […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory over 16 years sent almost 50 containers of incorrectly labeled radioactive waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the site’s prime contractor recently told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The lab assigned the containers codes that indicated they should have been able to generate less combustible hydrogen during […]

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission board in May plans to decide whether a citizen’s group can contest a utility’s plan to renew a license for storing the spent fuel of California’s last nuclear power plant, the commission said Monday. An NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board planned to hear arguments on May 24 from the San […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s latest Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, released Monday, fuzzed up delivery dates for distant, future nuclear weapons that, as recently as a year ago, had at least placeholder dates. Specially, three weapons, ground-, sea- and air-based warheads, now have “To Be Determined” first-production-unit delivery dates instead of the mid- to […]

Three long-tenured officials in the Washington State Ecology Department’s nuclear waste program planned to retire beginning in May, an agency spokesperson said. Starting May 1, Theresa Howell will be the new Tri-Party Agreement Section Manager and Beth Rochette will be the new Cleanup Section Manager at Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program, a spokesperson for the agencies […]

The director of government affairs and community engagement at the National Nuclear Security Administration left the agency this month for a career in industry, according to his LinkedIn profile. Harris Walker now lists himself as director of government affairs and a “lithium policy change agent” for Livent Corp., Philadelphia. That ended a Department of Energy […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday released its draft solicitation for bids on a potentially 25-year standalone contract to manage the Pantex Plant nuclear-weapons service hub in Amarillo, Texas. The cost-plus-fixed-fee contract will have at least a five-year base with one five-year option period and perhaps as many as two more five-year options after […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday kicked off a big environmental review of the agency’s plan for expanding the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. over the next 15 years. Among the activities the nuclear-weapons agency plans to review are: Upgrading the lab’s capability to test nuclear weapons and components in radiation-rich environments by […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 24-27: The Nuclear Energy Institute’s Used Fuel Management Conference. Paris Las Vegas 3655 S. Las Vegas Boulevard Las Vegas, Nev. 89109. Register online. 26: Hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee. “To receive testimony on the Department of Energy […]

News about the Department of Energy’s $26-million program to define consent-based siting of nuclear waste could drop next week, the agency’s top nuclear-energy official hinted Wednesday. DOE is putting together what it calls a consent-based siting consortia to help the agency decide not which spots could be suitable for a federally operated interim storage site […]

The Air Force and Navy on Wednesday morning used an airborne control center to test-fire an unarmed Minuteman III missile, the services said. The test gave the services a look at the Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS), an aircraft that can launch intercontinental ballistic missiles if ground-based communication with nuclear silos is disabled.  A joint […]

Moving long-stranded, potentially combustible radioactive waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico from a commercial site in Texas remains a priority, an agency official, told a National Academies of Sciences panel Tuesday. “We are continuing to work on a path forward for the LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory in […]

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a morale problem and needs to do something about it, a senator representing the state where agency headquarters is located said in a hearing Wednesday. “It needs to be first acknowledged that you have a problem,” Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) told Christopher Hanson, the NRC chair. “You then […]