Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, 68, a Rhodes scholar and theoretical physicist who helmed the Pentagon between 2015 and 2017, died of a heart attack Tuesday  at his home in Boston. At the time of his death, Carter was director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy […]

Government contractor Leidos started sampling both inside and outside Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Mo., on Monday for signs of radiological contamination, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a Tuesday press release. “We are in the process of collecting samples throughout the entire property to ensure the health and safety of the students […]

The heads of both the U.S. Department of Energy and the United Nations’ nuclear power authority were scheduled Wednesday to speak with reporters at an international conference held in Washington, D.C. Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm and Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are set to hold a joint press conference following […]

While most workers surveyed at the Department of Energy Portsmouth Site believe management is looking out for their safety most of the time, many lack confidence in radiation measurements and worry about chemical hazards at the former gaseous diffusion plant. Those are a couple of takeaways from a report done for the United Steelworkers Union […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not take disciplinary action against the operator of a California nuclear power plant despite finding that it ran afoul of federal regulations governing the storage of radioactive materials, the agency said in a letter Monday. Although NRC’s Sep. 30 inspection of Diablo Canyon Power plant revealed that operator Pacific Gas […]

The prime contractors for civilian nuclear-weapon sites get no “lasting benefit” from their corporate parent companies, the interests of which may conflict with national security, a small group of National Nuclear Security Administration employees wrote in a report dated September 2022. At the heart of the conflict, the six-member panel wrote in its report, is […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants Holtec International to explain why the company has proposed giving itself the power to manage investments from a shuttered New York nuclear plant’s decommissioning trust fund — something the agency said is illegal. In a request for additional information document sent to Holtec Friday, NRC took issue with a provision […]

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday allowed consumer advocacy group Public Citizen to pull out of a joint lawsuit challenging a proposed commercial interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in west Texas, court filings show. Public Citizen, which until Monday was part of a coalition of anti-nuclear groups suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., last week emplaced its last shipment of defense-related transuranic waste into Panel 7, the underground work area left contaminated by a radiation leak in February 2014. “Last week, last Thursday to be specific, the last waste was placed in panel 7,” said Sean Dunagan, […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend by up to a year a contract with a small business based in Arlington, Va.,for cleanup planning at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York. On Oct. 20 DOE announced its intent to extend its contract with h SC&A through Nov. 17, 2023 if all options are […]

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, pledged last week to seek funds for possible replacement of a middle school closed three years ago after public disclosure of radioactive contamination on the campus near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. Manchin, who also sits on the Senate […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Boards sent the Department of Energy a reminder about overdue safety reports for several nuclear weapon sites, according to a letter dated Oct. 20. DOE’s delay is “affecting the Board’s safety oversight,” Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) chair Joyce Connery wrote in the letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer […]

Mark Martinez planned to retire as president of Mission Support and Test Services, the Honeywell-led prime contractor for the Nevada National Security Site, according to people familiar with Martinez’s plans. A spokesperson for Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS) did not reply to a request for comment. Martinez has been president of MSTS since the […]

Two days after a U.S. Senator asked President Joe Biden to intervene, the Army Corps of Engineers announced plans to do more sampling for signs of radioactive contamination “inside and outside” the Jana Elementary School building in Greater St. Louis. The Corps St. Louis Field Office will expand upon its earlier sampling to include soil […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit planned to hear oral arguments at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Dec. 8 in Washington to consider whether Swift & Staley is  ineligible for a small business contract it won in 2020 for infrastructure support services at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky. The […]

  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a Nevada congresswoman in a recent letter that it was still considering a motion from the Silver State aimed at killing the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. NRC has Nevada’s Sep. 20 request to reopen the agency’s licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain site “under advisement in its […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 24: Meeting: The Department of Energy Waste Isolation Pilot Plant holds a public forum starting at 5:30 p.m. Central Time at Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino in Santa Fe. The meeting will also be carried online.  […]

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to declare a federal emergency after the Hazelwood, Mo., school board voted to stop using a local elementary school near which radioactive contamination has been found from a Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program cleanup site. The Hazelwood Board of Education acted Tuesday night to close […]

The Department of Energy in December plans to start a competition for a long-term contract to purchase energy-dense uranium fuel, with an eye toward awarding a deal in July, the agency told prospective bidders last week. In slides briefed during an Oct. 13 industry day and published online subsequently, DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy said […]

A hydrogen research contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal district court after being accused of filing false bills with the government.   Greenway Energy agreed to accept a plea agreement in proceedings before U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten in Columbia, S.C. and sentencing has been […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission may not wrap up a proposed series of amendments to its regulations for packaging and transporting radioactive waste for another two years or so, an agency official said during a webinar Wednesday. The current projected publication date for NRC’s proposed changes, which the agency has said would bring its oversight in […]

The Government Accountability Office on Tuesday denied a protest by a women owned small business seeking to overturn a $53-million award at the Y-12 National Security Complex to Sigma Science. Vector Resources — which lists its headquarters and mailing addresses in a pop-up business space in Erie, Pa., and a strip mall in Engelwood, Fla., […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is rolling out an Instagram account, the agency said in a press release Wednesday. NRC’s new account on photo-sharing social media platform Instagram will be used to post photos, videos and graphics to “provide a more creative approach to information regarding the NRC’s mission, with a focus on the skilled and […]

The Department of Energy expects it will be early 2023 before an Amentum-led contractor starts pretreating its third batch of low-level radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. An ongoing planned outage could take a few more months, a DOE spokesperson said by email Wednesday. That is longer than the agency’s characterization […]

In the nine months just ended, renationalization of the U.K. nuclear weapons complex cost Lockheed Martin’s Space segment more than three quarters of a billion dollars, the company reported Tuesday. Bringing the British weapons program fully back into the government’s arms dropped sales in Lockheed Space by some $865 million over the past nine months, […]