Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Energy could spend $20 million on tearing down contaminated old facilities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California during fiscal 2024, or about $15 million less than what Congress approved for that purpose in fiscal 2023, according to the White House budget justification out last week. The DOE Office of Environmental […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. March 21-22: In-person/virtual hybrid meeting: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board Chairs. U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Room 6E-069, Washington, D.C. 20585. Members of the public may not attend in person, DOE says. Members […]

The Department of Energy is “on track” to start solidifying liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state “no later than 2025,” the agency said in its latest budget request this week.  That timeline, less optimistic than the December 2023 goal the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management was targeting until a few months […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 32 shipments of transuranic waste during February, according to the facility’s public website. The latest monthly figure shows progress over the prior year shipment period, but suggests DOE still must increase its rate over a sustained period to reach the annual levels the […]

A bill that would broadly prohibit storage of spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico is set up for a final vote in the New Mexico legislature with only days to go before the end of the session. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee of the New Mexico House of Representatives passed an amended version of […]

Consent-based siting, or securing support at all levels of government for a nuclear-waste repository, “won’t be fun,” a Nuclear Regulatory Commission commission said Wednesday at an agency conference. “Even a consent-based process is going to take time and it’s not going to be fun, but it’s the only way that’s going to be lasting,” NRC […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would, after helping prop up the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund again in fiscal 2024, effectively stay flat at $8.3 billion, according to White House budget request details released this week. Defense Environmental Cleanup, the largest tranche of the nuclear cleanup budget, would be relatively flat […]

Funding for a nuclear warhead carried by an in-development sea-launched cruise missile was written out of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s fiscal year 2024 budget request, reflecting the Biden administration’s desire to cancel the weapon. The NNSA received $20 million in 2023 to continue development of a lower-yield sea-launched cruise missile variant of the W80-4 […]

Materials shortages, technology changes and other factors have pushed major enhancements to a nuclear-weapon testing facility in Nevada back three years and inflated the overall project cost to $1.8 billion, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s 2024 budget request. Supply chain disruptions and other problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to the […]

President Joe Biden’s administration requested $47.2 million in funding for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for fiscal year 2024, up from $41.4 million this year. That is according to the 1,350-page appendix to the fiscal 2024 budget request released by the White House this week. Fiscal year 2024 begins Oct. 1. The Defense Nuclear […]

The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy would fall about 12% to around $1.56 billion in fiscal year 2024 if the White House’s latest federal spending request became law. That’s about $210 million less than the 2023 appropriation Congress provided in December in an omnibus spending bill for the part of […]

Bills pending before the South Carolina legislature could split the state regulator for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken into two separate organizations, a state agency official told the Citizens Advisory Board for the federal complex Monday. Susan Fulmer, manager of federal remediation for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2024 includes a funding boost for plutonium pit production in New Mexico, with the goal of building 80 per year as close to 2030 as possible.  Also in the request, the NNSA provided a new cost and schedule estimate for completing the Uranium Processing Facility […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has, after an extended outage, restarted a cesium pretreatment pilot project critical to waste solidification at the site, the DOE said via Twitter Monday. Tank operations manager Washington River Protection Solutions has resumed operation of the Tank-Side Cesium Removal System (TSCR) at Hanford, […]

Details appended to President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget request show the budget for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state would grow to about $3 billion, up from $2.7 billion from the current fiscal year. “The fiscal year 2024 record Hanford budget request by President Biden of more than $3 billion is […]

Work continues on transfer of the Savannah River Site landlord authority to the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, the top cleanup fed at the South Carolina complex told a DOE advisory panel Monday. A joint team of DOE Office of Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) representatives should issue a […]

Australia will buy three U.S.-built Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines beginning in the 2030s as part of the tripartite AUKUS deal, the parties said Monday. AUKUS aims both to create an Australian nuclear submarine force and industrial base and recapitalize the U.S. submarine building industry. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and U.K. Prime Minister […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would wind up with close to a flat budget in 2024 if a request sent to Congress Monday becomes law. The independent federal civilian nuclear power regulator seeks some $979.2 million for fiscal year 2024, about $52 million million more than the roughly $927 million Congress approved for fiscal year 2023 […]

The Air Force conducted a critical design review for the AGM-181 Long Range Stand-Off nuclear-tipped cruise missile from Feb. 2 to -March 2 at Eglin AFB, Fla., a service spokesperson said Monday. Raytheon Technologies, Arlington, Va., is the Air Force’s prime contractor for the missile, which will carry a W80-4 warhead provided by the National […]

The top boss from the Department of Energy’s former prime contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is now a project manager with the Amentum-led environmental remediation contractor at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, according to his LinkedIn profile. Sean Dunagan was president and project manager of Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., are roughly halfway through sinking a new underground utility shaft, site managers said Thursday. Shaft-sinking crews recently surpassed the midway point at 1,076-feet deep, the DOE and its new prime contractor, Bechtel affiliate Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, said in a March 9 […]

A federal jury convicted a former Ohio lawmaker and an accomplice Thursday for a massive bribery scheme intended to keep two struggling Ohio reactors financially afloat. Former House speaker Larry Householder, 63, and former Ohio Republican Party chairman Mathew Borges, 50, face potential sentences of up to 20 years in prison. The trial lasted seven […]

Employees of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who sued over the lab contractor’s COVID-19 vaccination policy have “narrowed the issues” to be addressed in ongoing settlement talks, according to a recent court filing. Attorneys for the management contractor UT-Battelle, composed of the University of Tennessee and Battelle, and the half-dozen employees who sued, should report […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 13: Meeting: The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board hold a regular meeting starting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time at the HUB for Community Innovation 631 Chafee Avenue | Augusta, Ga.  The meeting can be watched via […]

Nevada’s senior senator last week expressed skepticism about the safety of spent-nuclear-fuel casks, which the director of the Idaho National Laboratory touted during a hearing about nuclear energy and waste.  The Thursday hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee veered into a discussion of a Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, […]