Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 11: Meeting: The National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board holds a virtual meeting starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on its review of the continued analysis of supplemental treatment of Low-Activity Waste at the Department […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration backdated letters to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and claimed its own safety rules actually permitted safety deficiencies the rules were supposed to prevent, the board said. In a letter late last year to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, the board complained about “the recent practice of the National […]

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board inspectors at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington spotted a questionable safety practice, and a reluctance to talk about it, at one of the tank farms last month, according to a recent report. “A resident inspector observed an event investigation meeting after workers in the SX tank farm […]

The operator of California’s last nuclear power plant, which just got a new lease on life, said that the facility’s system for managing reactor coolant pressure was leaking, according to a recent letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. During an October refueling outage at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) discovered a […]

The mayor of Carlsbad, N.M., Dale Janway, said in a Sunday newspaper column he wants the Department of Energy’s deep underground disposal site for transuranic waste to stay open for a long time and is wary of the New Mexico Environment Department gaining more clout over the future of the facility. “It is certainly our […]

The potential environmental effects of a proposed cleanup plan for a shuttered uranium mine in New Mexico likely will not stand in the way of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approving the cleanup, according to an agency report published Wednesday. The “adverse environmental impacts” of the proposed license amendment for the United Nuclear Corporation’s Church Rock […]

Another federal agency has financially penalized FirstEnergy Corp. for its involvement in a 2019 bribery scandal. In a Dec. 15 agreement, FirstEnergy agreed to pay a $3.86 million fine to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for not being up front with FERC auditors, between 2015 and the subsequent 2019 scandal, about almost $60 million […]

A federal judge in Eastern Washington, who twice allowed 314 employees at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to amend their complaint over government COVID-19 vaccination requirements, was justified in dismissing the case, Justice Department attorneys told the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals Dec. 23. Only seven of the plaintiffs in the David Donovan versus […]

Rick McLeod, the longtime executive director of the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization, officially retired from the post this week although he will stay on while the South Carolina-based group looks for a successor, he said in a Jan. 1 post on LinkedIn. The organization is currently searching for a new boss. “I’m on […]

Lynchburg, Va., -based BWX Technologies said Wednesday it has promoted Ronald (Chip) Whitford, Jr., to a senior vice president post succeeding Thomas McCabe, who will retire from the nuclear company this summer. Effective this week, Whitford is now senior vice president, general counsel, chief compliance officer and corporate secretary, BWXT said in a press release. […]

The 118th Congress that began Tuesday was set to bring with it a few changes to Congressional representation for the states, regions and cities hosting Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites. In the Senate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), an author with no political experience and an avowed ally of former President Donald Trump (R) succeeded the […]

In a majority opinion, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found President Joe Biden overstepped his authority by using the Procurement Act to require virtually all federal contract workers be vaccinated against COVID-19. “The President asks this Court to ratify an exercise of proprietary authority that would […]

The fiscal 2023 omnibus budget that the 117th Congress passed just before adjourning before Christmas includes $20 million for replacement of a middle school that closed in May 2019 due to concern over radiological contamination from the Department of Energy’s adjacent Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio. The $20 million toward replacement of the Zahns Corner […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to award Converdyn a five-year, sole-source contract to convert triuranium octoxide into uranium hexafluoride as part of a new federal uranium stockpiling program. Converdyn, a Metropolis, Ill., partnership of Honeywell and General atomics, operates the only U.S.-based conversion facility capable of turning triuranium octoxide into uranium hexafluoride, the National […]

Jacobs-led Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership won 69% of its discretionary fee for cleanup work at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky during fiscal 2022, an improvement from its performance in fiscal 2021. Overall the contractor claimed 80% of its total potential award fee for 2022, according to an agency scorecard dated Dec. 28. […]

Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services earned 93% of its overall fee and roughly three-quarters of its subjective fee during fiscal 2022 under its depleted uranium hexafluoride contract at gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky, the Department of Energy said. The contractor won $1.7 million out of a potential $2.3 million or 74% of its subjective […]

The Department of Energy’s Fluor-led cleanup contractor for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio pocketed 93%, or $14 million, of $15 million in overall available fees in the second half of fiscal 2022, according to a scorecard released by the agency Dec. 28. Fluor‐BWXT Portsmouth took home all of the available $10.54 million in performance-based fees […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 05: Meeting: The Portsmouth Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board meets at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

The legacy cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico won 70% of its subjective fee and 77% of its overall fee during fiscal 2022. Newport News Nuclear BWXT (N3B) won about $7.2 million out of a potential $9.3 million for the 12-month period ended Sept. 30. The DOE […]

Nuclear services company Holtec International unveiled Tuesday its newest device for dismantling nuclear reactor components, which is already in use at a shuttered New York nuclear power plant, according to a press release. Holtec’s “innovative segmentation technology,” dubbed HI-CUT in the company’s Tuesday press release, is designed to “improve the efficacy of dismantling radiation-hardened and […]

The Department of Energy was set to fine Sandia National Laboratories more than $200,000 for allowing unauthorized electronic equipment into secure areas of the lab’s main campus in Albuquerque, N.M., two years ago, the agency said Friday. The agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments hit lab prime National Engineering and Technology Solutions of Sandia (NTESS) with […]

As planned, C. Michael Petters will end his time with Huntington Ingalls Industries on Dec. 31, sweeping away one of the final vestiges of the company’s past as Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. Petters joined the company then known as Newport News shipbuilding in 1987, eventually rising to become president of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding and president of […]

Congress passed and President Joe Biden (D) on Friday signed an appropriations bill that sets the Department of Energy’s fiscal year 2023 budget at $46.2 billion and provides year-over-year raises for nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapons cleanup programs that exceed the White House’s request. The bill also provides close to the requested funding for civilian nuclear […]

Idaho Environmental Coalition won 86% of its subjective fee and 94% of its total potential fee for five months of cleanup work in 2022 at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, including preparing a nuclear waste treatment plant for startup. Idaho Environmental Coalition, which took over from Fluor Idaho on the Idaho Cleanup Project […]