Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions claimed 82% of its subjective fee and 87% of its total potential fee for its tank management work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state for the 2022 fiscal year, the agency reported Tuesday. Also on Tuesday, DOE officials at Hanford issued the latest fee performance documents […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch would see its annual budget swell to nearly $8.3 billion, or $359 million than the $7.9 billion it received during fiscal 2022, under an omnibus 2023 spending bill released Tuesday. It’s the same figure the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended this summer after the House approves the $7.9 billion […]

WATERFORD, CT — Congress probably will not allow the Department of Energy to build an interim storage site for nuclear waste any time soon, one of Capitol Hill’s foremost advocates for spent fuel solutions said here Tuesday. Federal law passed as part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act says the Department of Energy has to […]

WATERFORD, CT — The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy will begin looking for a new head of spent fuel and waste disposition soon, the head of the office said here Tuesday. DOE plans to open applications for deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition “in the coming days,” Assistant Secretary of […]

The Hanford Site in Washington state and other Department of Energy nuclear facilities in the northern United States could see single-digit temperatures and cold winds in the days leading up to Christmas, according to forecasts from the National Weather Service. For example, the Richland, Wash., area, where Hanford is located, could see a Wednesday night […]

Responding to a scathing letter from the government’s environmental regulator, the company in charge of decommissioning a Massachusetts nuclear power plant insisted Monday that it was not planning to discharge irradiated wastewater from the facility in violation of a federal permit. In a Monday letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Holtec International sought to […]

Civilian nuclear weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration will almost all get year-over-year raises in excess of what the White House requested under an omnibus 2023 spending proposal released early Tuesday morning. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency would get about $22.2 billion under the bill: some $750 million more than requested […]

The company in charge of decommissioning a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant said Monday that it would make another attempt to restart the facility via a federal bailout scheme. Although it had previously tamped down the possibility that it could participate in the second round of the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program, a […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Nimble series of subcritical experiments in Nevada should wrap up in fiscal year 2024, about a year later than the California nuclear-weapons lab once planned. The Nimble series “is scheduled to be complete later in FY23 & early FY24” a lab spokesperson wrote in an email on Monday, referring to government […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board could be left without a quorum within 10 months if President Joe Biden fails to nominate and win Senate approval of at least one individual before the term ends for a long-serving member. It increasingly appears 2022 will draw to a close without the White House nominating anyone to […]

The U.S. and Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding about civilian nuclear cooperation, the U.S. State Department announced late last week. The two countries now have what is formally known as a “Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation,” according to State’s press release, dated Thursday. The memorandum does not indicate any immediate transfer […]

Inching forward with plans to dispose of surplus plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans public hearings after New Year’s on its just-released draft environmental review of the project, the agency said Friday. The nuclear-weapons agency on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement about its planned Surplus Plutonium […]

The Department of Energy last week issued a task order for Jacobs-led Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership to continue with shipment and destruction of legacy R-114 refrigerant, better known under the brand name Freon, from the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Four Rivers, which also has Fluor and BWX Technologies on its team, received its $16 million […]

The Senate could vote this week on a short-term federal funding extension and soon after that on the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, leaving a long-term 2023 spending bill as the last domino to fall before the 118th Congress begins in January. In the Department of Energy, both the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) active […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that it has lifted some environmental quality assurance requirements for a shuttered California nuclear power plant now that decommissioning work at the facility has wrapped up. In its Oct. 11 order, announced in a Federal Register notice Wednesday, NRC exempted Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from regulations that required […]

A contractor readiness review at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has concluded the Liquid Effluent Retention Facility is about ready to start operations as a hazard category 3 nuclear facility, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report. The readiness review that occurred in Novemebr is designed to check to […]

The United States Nuclear Industry Council has selected Todd Abrajano, founder of Turning Point Public Affairs, as its new president and chief executive officer effective Jan. 2, the industry advocacy organization announced Wednesday. Abrajano will succeed Clarence (Bud) Albright who has led the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council (USNIC) since December 2019 and previously served as […]

The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used its bank of high-powered lasers on Dec. 5 to ignite a fusion reaction that produced more energy from a small pellet than the lasers put into the pellet, the lab said. The long-hoped for achievement marked “a new chapter in NNSA’s [National Nuclear Security […]

Orano USA has finished dismantling and packaging the main reactor unit at a Vermont nuclear power plant under decommissioning, the company announced Tuesday. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station’s single boiling-water reactor has been completely segmented and all irradiated components have been packaged for transport, Orano said in a press release dated Tuesday. The reactor’s pressure […]

Although the House Democrat currently in charge of the chamber’s energy committee will hand in his gavel in the next Congress, he will stick with the panel as its ranking member, according to a press release Tuesday. The House Democratic Caucus unanimously elected Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce […]

Federal agencies including the Department of Energy will make do with a couple more weeks of their 2022 budgets while Congress works toward a full-year spending deal. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees on Tuesday announced they had reached an agreement in principle on a framework for the full-year budget, but lawmakers had not released […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board last week appointed Nichole Huntington a new resident inspector at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Huntington’s first day on the job was Dec. 5, according to a press release from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) acting executive director of operations Christopher Roscetti. Huntington […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received 16 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during November, according to DOE. There were 14 shipments recorded on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) public website as of Tuesday Dec. 13. The website runs about two weeks behind active shipments and a site spokesperson said two more […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set a date for hearing an anti-nuclear group’s case against the proposed decommissioning of a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant, according to agency documents. NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board planned Jan. 19 to hold an oral argument session on Three Mile Island Alert’s (TMIA) petition against a proposed license amendment […]

The Secretary of Energy and the department’s top nuclear-weapons official were to brief press at 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday about what media reported is a record-setting energy output at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The briefing was to be livestreamed. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore’s California campus […]