Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

Jeff Avery, a longtime manager with the Office of Naval Reactors, has been selected as the new second-in-command at the Department of Energy’s $7.8-billion Office of Environmental Management. Avery, current director of regulatory and security affairs with the Office of Naval Reactors, officially becomes principal deputy assistant secretary for Environmental Management, or EM-2, effective in […]

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, Beloit, Wis., finished building a factory to produce, without the use of highly enriched uranium, the medically usable isotope Molybdenum-99, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday.  NorthStar is one of several U.S. companies that have gotten money from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to expand domestic production of the isotope, […]

Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions is seeking a subcontractor to help ensure the quality of its cesium-removal system for low-level radioactive tank waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) is looking for a subcontractor to help with the “procurement, fabrication, and testing of replacement ion exchange […]

China will “basically complete modernization” of its military capabilities by 2035, by which time it may have a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear warheads, the Pentagon said in a report released Tuesday. The latest congressionally mandated “China Military Power” report covers developments through the end of 2021. In it, the Pentagon said that China likely accelerated […]

Small businesses on the hunt for a share of assorted nationwide nuclear cleanup work at government sites are encouraged to team up by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. “DOE is issuing this notification to encourage offerors to consider the establishment of contractor teaming arrangements,” in pursuit of small business set-aside awards for […]

A Texas company that owns land in the state’s oil-rich Permian Basin told a federal court Monday that, despite claims by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company had the right to sue the agency over an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel proposed for the region, court documents show. Fasken Land and Minerals, LLC, […]

The cost of the next subcritical nuclear testing facility in Nevada crept up a little, according to an audit report published Monday by the Department of Energy’s Inspector General. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) now projects a maximum combined cost for the U1a Complex Enhancement Project (UCEP) of $577 million, a little more than […]

The administration of President Joe Biden has yet to submit its legal response to a brief filed earlier this month in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit over legality of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for most workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. The current deadline for the government’s answering briefing […]

An official for the company dismantling a shuttered Massachusetts nuclear power plant defended its controversial interpretation of a federal pollutant discharge permit during a community meeting Monday evening. It is “very clear” that Holtec International’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station “exempt[s] radionuclides as pollutants,” Dave Noyes, a senior […]

After the Department of Energy snubbed a shuttered Michigan nuclear power plant for a federal bailout, the company in charge of the facility does may not throw its hat in the ring for the agency’s second round of awards. A spokesperson for Holtec International, which in June took ownership of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, told […]

The state of Minnesota has charged the Department of Energy’s recently-hired head of spent nuclear fuel management with felony theft, court documents show. According to a criminal complaint filed Oct. 27 in Minnesota’s 4th Judicial District Court, Sam Brinton, who began working in June as DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition, […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. December 01: Meeting: The Environmental Management Advisory Board meets in hybrid session at 1 p.m. Central Time at Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Napoleon Room C-3, 500 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. 02: Rollout of the […]

The Department of Energy will apply a little extra scrutiny to a worker’s heat exhaustion during legacy nuclear waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments said recently. The worker “experienced heat exhaustion while supporting corrugated metal pipe retrieval operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on September 8, […]

A recent inspection at a shuttered New York nuclear power plant revealed that the facility’s radiation protection program did not meet federal regulations, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a letter to the company decommissioning the site. NRC’s Sep. 30 inspection at Indian Point Energy Center found that plant owner Holtec International failed “to develop […]