Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The U.S. will not allow Australia’s submarine forces to have “capability gap” between the time the island nation retires its diesel-powered submarines and deploys nuclear-powered subs powered by technology provided by the U.K. and the U.S.  “[W]e will not allow Australia to have a capability gap going forward,” Austin said at a press conference after […]

Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton was set on Friday to assume command of the interagency forces that carry U.S. nuclear weapons. Cotton, now commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, will take over from Admiral Charles Richard, who has led U.S. Strategic Command since November 2019. Richard will retire from active duty, Strategic Command said. […]

Communities interested in receiving federal funding to explore hosting an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel now have through January to apply, the Department of Energy announced Wednesday. The deadline for DOE’s roughly $16 million interim storage funding opportunity is now Jan. 31, the agency announced in a Tweet Wednesday. Dec. 19 had been […]

A building slated to become a key cog in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit-production complex is taking longer than expected to be authorized to hold enough plutonium for its new mission, a spokesperson said Tuesday. The Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building (RLUOB) should be recategorized as a hazard category 3 nuclear facility by March 2023, […]

An anti-nuclear group looking to block decommissioning of a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant may get a chance in the new year to argue its case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to agency correspondence. NRC’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board planned to hold a 90-minute oral argument session on Three Mile Island Alert’s (TMIA) petition against […]

A two-year legal fight comes to a head Thursday with a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., set to consider if incumbent Swift & Staley was too large to qualify for a $160-million small business contract it won in December 2020 at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky. Sometime after 10 a.m. Eastern […]

The company in charge of decommissioning a shuttered New York nuclear power plant forecast that it could finish moving the facility’s spent nuclear fuel inventory into dry storage early next year, according to regulatory filings. Holtec International, which is dismantling Indian Point Energy Center, has told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it expects spent fuel transfer […]

Maryland-based Amentum has hired a former Cavendish Nuclear boss, Loren Jones, to lead its national security group’s international business line, Amentum said in a Tuesday press release. Jones joined Amentum this month as managing director and senior vice president of the Amentum security group’s international business. He will head nuclear, security and environment business for […]

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority wrapped up most spent fuel reprocessing during 2022, one of the major advances for the agency charged with cleaning up the kingdom’s early nuclear sites, according to a new report. The U.K. National Decommissioning Authority (NDA) “strategy is to bring the reprocessing programme to an end,” according to the […]

A compromise National Defense Authorization Act released late Tuesday would authorize the National Nuclear Security Administration to spend some $880 million more than requested, more than the House or Senate had proposed individually. The bill also authorizes almost $7 billion, $100 million more than requested, for defense environmental cleanup: the largest account in the Department […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration extended Los Alamos National Laboratory management and operations contractor Triad National Security for five more years, through Nov. 1, 2028, the agency announced Tuesday. In the third such mass-extension this year for a nuclear-weapons site contractor, the agency picked up five one-year options on Triad’s contract simultaneously.  Triad includes team […]

The Department of Energy is planning to open up its second round of bailouts for economically-troubled nuclear power plants in the new year, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. DOE is preparing its next round of funding under its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, greenlit in November 2021 under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs […]

Long-idled design work resumed this summer on the high-level waste portion of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. After August workshops, prime contractor Bechtel National and DOE created what they call the “HLW [High Level Waste] Firm […]

Congressional leaders said they still wanted to pass the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act before Republicans take control of the House in January, but partisan maneuvering over issues unrelated to Department of Energy nuclear-weapon programs have held the bill up. The House Rules Committee was scheduled Monday to set the terms of debate for the […]

During fiscal 2022, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board worked on staffing needs and finalized a deal with the Department of Energy spelling out the watchdog’s authority to access people, records and facilities around the weapons complex. Those are a couple of highlights from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) fiscal 2022 Agency Financial […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was scheduled this week to discuss a proposed 20-year life extension for California’s last operating nuclear power plant, according to agency documents. NRC is currently weighing whether to renew Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s operating license. According to a meeting notice published Monday afternoon, the commission planned to meet with the plant […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. December 07: Business meeting, Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Consideration of legislation, including S.4064, to facilitate the development of a whole-of-government strategy for nuclear cooperation and nuclear exports 10:00 a.m. Eastern time. Capitol Hill, room S-116. No […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch should not see a significant near-term decrease in its budget for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina because control of the federal complex is being transferred to the National Nuclear Security Administration, a budget and planning official said last week. “Most of our funding is for liquid […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is poised to move beyond what its administrator recently characterized as an outmoded system of requiring the contractors who manage major nuclear-weapon sites to earn extensions one year at a time. “[T]he one-year contract for award terms were incredibly destabilizing at our labs, plants and sites because they couldn’t keep […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch could increase the value of a North Wind Group environmental remediation contract at a naval reactor laboratory site in New York state to $47 million from $22 million, according to a procurement notice published last week. The DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center published a justification for […]

Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions started procurement this week for a subcontractor to help with the next liquid radioactive waste pretreatment system at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The planned Advanced Modular Pretreatment System will be a successor to the Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) project that the Amentum-led Washington River […]

The long-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory should start heating up before New Year’s and begin its cleanup mission in January, state and federal agencies said Wednesday. The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), designed to convert 900,000 gallons of high-level sodium bearing radioactive waste into a granular form, […]

A Maryland woman just sentenced to prison for her role in attempting to sell U.S. nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign country has lodged an appeal, court documents filed Tuesday show. On Nov. 9, Diana Toebbe, 46, was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District […]

The ranking member of the Senate’ Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday urged the Department of Energy to fire its head of spent nuclear fuel disposal activities following news of a recent felony theft charge. In his Tuesday letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) expressed “serious concerns” regarding news that […]

The increase in prices to bury low-level radioactive waste at disposal sites across the country should affect nuclear power plant operators’ decommissioning cost estimates, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a recent report. NRC’s report, published Tuesday on the Federal Register, serves as the agency’s annual update to low-level waste (LLRW) disposal cost projections at […]