Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A U.S. appeals court recently upheld a nation-wide injunction against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most federal workers. The ruling 10-6 ruling on Thursday from a majority of judges on the New Orleans-based U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of appeals, who heard oral arguments in September, upheld the January 2022 preliminary injunction issued by […]

The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration was scheduled to testify Tuesday at 9 a.m. before the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, where she will take questions on the agency’s fiscal 2024 budget request. NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby will be joined by John Plumb assistant secretary of defense for space policy, Deborah Rosenblum […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still looking for a successor to its first executive director of operations, who left in August, the board said in a recent report to Congress. “The board is actively recruiting to fill that vacancy in 2023,” according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s 33rd Annual Report to […]

After several years of planning, the initial discard of uranium solution from the new Accelerated Basin De-inventory program at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., was successfully transferred to the SRS liquid waste program from the H Canyon Chemical Separations Facility, the Department of Energy said last week. The newly implemented Accelerated Basin De-inventory […]

Geiger Brothers, an Ohio-based engineering and contracting business, won a $9.9 million contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the K-25 viewing platform at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the corps announced Friday. The award from the U.S. Army Corps’ Nashville District was posted in a Friday notice […]

The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management has issued stopgap extensions to avoid lapses in nuclear cleanup work this week at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and treatment of a uranium enrichment byproduct there, and at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services will both receive contract extensions of […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. March 28: Meeting, hybrid/in-person, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board: DOE Efforts Related to Removing Spent Nuclear Fuel from  commercial Nuclear Power Plant Sites. The Florida Hotel and Conference Center, 1500 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, Fla. 32809. […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was scheduled to take questions from appropriators in the Republican-controlled House this morning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time about the Department of Energy’s 2024 budget request.  The hearing of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee was scheduled to stream online on the committee’s website. Overall, the Joe Biden […]

Citing a national security memorandum that describes a reduced need for the B83 thermonuclear gravity bomb, the National Nuclear Administration proposed cutting funding for the weapon in its 2024 budget request.  The NNSA proposed cutting $28 million from funding for management of the B83 in its fiscal 2024 budget request, owing to “updated program requirements […]

Holtec Decommissioning International this week pitched the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on restarting the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan via a license amendment request, according to company documents posted online Monday. It was the first time the company, which wants to find a buyer to reopen and operate Palisades if suitable federal subsidies can be […]

A group of current and former Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio are again targets of a federal lawsuit, this one filed by a plaintiff suffering from cancer who attended a now-shuttered middle school near the former gaseous diffusion plant. Christian Rose, diagnosed in June with Burkitt Lymphoma, a cancer of […]

The Department of Energy is giving interested bidders two extra weeks to submit proposals for the new Occupational Medical Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a procurement notice published Monday. Response to the partial request for proposals that came out last month are now due April 24 rather than the earlier […]

The Department of Energy has a nickname: “the Department of Everything,” the acting DOE nuclear cleanup boss told weapons complex citizen advisory board chairs Tuesday.   The DOE Office of Environmental Management senior adviser William (Ike) White retold the joke during a Washington, D.C., meeting. The description applies to an agency involved in issues ranging from […]

Australian leaders are concerned about the nuclear waste the country’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet, which the country will buy and then build under the AUKUS deal with the U.S. and U.K.  AUKUS also poses complicated questions of compliance for Australia, which is treaty-bound to neither produce or possess nuclear weapons or materials that could be used […]

Citing a lack of resources, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday delayed its decision to license a proposed commercial interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel by up to two months.  NRC delivered the news in a letter to Kimberly Manzione, Holtec International’s director of licensing, from the agency’s Bernard White, who signed the missive […]

New Mexico’s public misgivings about nuclear waste is worrisome in Washington state where the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site is expected to become a big shipper to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in a few years and finish around 2050, a Hanford community representative said Tuesday. “There is one item that is hitting our screen […]

Lawyers representing employees who accuse Consolidated Nuclear Security, manager of the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge Tenn., of withholding wages have withdrawn from a proposed class action lawsuit against the contractor.  The motion to withdraw as counsel was granted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Knoxville on Monday. Justin […]

Bechtel National earned more than $6.5 million, or 83% of its total potential fee, for Department of Energy work in 2022 on the long-anticipated Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Overall, the company earned $6.53 million out of a potential $7.87 million in fee for the calendar year ended […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s longest-serving associate administrator Jeffrey Johnson, the chief of nuclear security, announced his retirement on Monday.  Johnson served eight years at NNSA following a 20-year career in uniform and seven years as a civilian employee with the U.S. Marine Corps, according to a statement from the NNSA. The NNSA did not […]

The procurement center for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental holds its first so-called “Reverse Industry Day,” online in May, a move sought by the Government Accountability Office. The virtual Reverse Industry Day is scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern Time on May 4, according to a Monday notice from the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated […]

The Department of Energy considers 2,000 gallons of tank waste earmarked for the test-bed initiative at the Hanford Site in Washington state to be low-level radioactive waste and not high-level waste, the agency wrote in a Federal Register notice published Monday morning. The notice, officially the final Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Determination, which is now […]

New Mexico on Friday legalized a ban on the storage of spent nuclear fuel in the state, potentially complicating Holtec International’s proposal to build a spent-fuel storage depot there. On Friday, the state House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 53 by a margin of 35 to 28. Gov. Michelle Lujan (D) signed the bill the […]

With infusions of federal funding shifting industry’s focus to recapitalizing nuclear power plants from decommissioning them, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans next week to conduct more public comment about proposed revisions to the environmental paperwork associated with renewing reactor licenses. The NRC in March proposed changes to the generic environmental impact statement the agency conducts […]

The federal watchdog for Department of Energy nuclear defense sites continues to pursue “an aggressive staffing plan” initiated over the past two years to make up for workforce brain-drain, according to an agency budget justification document issued last week. For fiscal year 2024, the administration of President Joe Biden (D) requested $47.2 million for the […]

The 1,200 or so employees at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will almost-certainly be retired by the time the Hanford Site in Washington state is fully cleaned up, based upon the budget request issued last week by the White House. The acting boss for Environment Management, said last fall the nuclear cleanup […]