Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

In a matter of weeks, the Government Accountability Office could rule on two protests against the Department of Energy’s decision to let a Bechtel National-led group run the agency’s only underground repository for defense-related transuranic waste. There are two appeals pending against the potentially 10-year, $3-billion management and operations contract for the Waste Isolation Pilot […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy is considering the purchase of up to 25 metric tons annually of high-assay low enriched uranium, the office said Thursday in a request that solicited both information about and sources of the material. The office envisions at least a six-year contract for the material, to begin “as […]

Here is an event related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week October 12: Meeting: The Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board for Oak Ridge holds a hybrid meeting starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The session will be held at the DOE Information Center, Office of Science and […]

The prime contractor at the Savannah River Site last week signed a project labor agreement with a consortium of 19 labor unions for construction of the larger of the National Nuclear Security Administration plutonium pit plants. The Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and the Augusta Building and Construction Trades Council inked the accord in Augusta, […]

The recent effort to keep California’s last operating nuclear power plant online enjoys bipartisan support among voters in the Golden State, according to a university poll published Friday. Among registered voters in California, 56% said that they support keeping Diablo Canyon Power Plant online five years past its scheduled 2025 shutdown date, according to polling […]

Two research contractors for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory could enter guilty pleas next week for allegedly submitting false bills to the federal agency for nearly a decade, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for South Carolina. Greenway Energy and Savannah River Consulting, both of which have agreed to plead […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration picked up Westinghouse Government Service’s next 10-year option to manufacture tritium producing burnable absorber rods at a South Carolina factory. The rods are the source of tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons. Westinghouse has a sole-source contract to produce tritium producing burnable absorber rods, which the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory designed. […]

An Amentum-Jacobs team won about $27.5 million or 85% out of a potential $32 million from the Department of Energy for its remediation of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee during the final seven months on the job. The DOE released the URS CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) award Oct. 3 for the period spanning Nov. […]

Cavendish Nuclear, an international nuclear player in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, opened a United States office headquarters Sept. 22 in Arlington, Va., a spokesperson confirmed by email Wednesday. The nuclear industries in the United Kingdom and United States “share many similarities in their plant designs, operational histories and in the search […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN – Revitalizing decaying buildings, decoupling future contracts for two nuclear weapons plants and assessing the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic had on the Uranium Processing Facility are among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s key concerns nowadays, officials said here Wednesday. The pandemic has had a ripple effect across the economy and the […]

The Department of Energy could announce as soon as Thursday which nuclear power plant operators will receive the first round of payouts in the agency’s multi-billion dollar civil nuclear credits program. Thursday marks one month since the Sep. 6 application deadline for DOE’s roughly $6 billion bailout scheme. An agency spokesperson told Exchange Monitor in […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN. – The Department of Energy’s acting manager for nuclear cleanup at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee said here Wednesday that final state and federal authorization are in hand for design and construction of a long-sought onsite low-level hazardous waste landfill. “We had a major milestone on Friday,” when the state of Tennessee […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration will take over the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by 2025, and the transition has started, the Department of Energy confirmed Tuesday. The former plutonium production site is currently the responsibility of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the part of the agency responsible for cleaning up shuttered Manhattan […]

KNOXVILLE, TENN. —The acting boss of the $7.8-billion Department of Energy office in charge of cleaning up Cold War and Manhattan Project nuclear weapon sites will kick off an annual nuclear and environmental business opportunities conference here Wednesday. William (Ike) White, senior adviser for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, headlines the annual gathering sponsored […]

A Michigan state representative sponsoring legislation to support developing nuclear power in the Great Lake State said Tuesday that a recently-closed nuclear facility should be part of such a push. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) support for a proposal to restart Palisades Nuclear Generating Station using cash from a Department of Energy bailout is “really good,” […]

Department of Energy contractor Veolia Nuclear Solutions Federal Services has promoted chief operating officer Steve Moore to be its president and CEO. The U.S. based subsidiary of Veolia Nuclear Solutions announced the promotion in a Tuesday press release. Moore has been interim CEO since August following the resignation of William Morrison, who left Veolia to […]

Representatives of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup field office at the Los Alamos National Laboratory told the Northern New Mexico Advisory Board Monday the legacy waste contractor has started digging up corrugated metal pipes at Area G. In addition, the DOE’s Environmental Management field office should produce a strategic plan within the next 15 […]

The Department of Energy could have its own interim storage facility to store U.S. spent nuclear fuel within a decade or so, the Office of Nuclear Energy’s newly-minted head of waste disposition said during a webinar Monday. “We will have a federal interim storage facility within the decade, if not fifteen years, with a consent-based […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration planned to start work on a competition for a pair of new contracts to manage its main nuclear-weapon sites in 2023 and 2024, the agency said Monday. In the meantime, Oct. 1 marked the official start of big-money extensions to Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the Bechtel National-led incumbent at the […]

The Department of Energy is asking state regulators for another six months to start operating a plant to treat high-level radioactive sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. In a Sept. 29 letter, DOE asked the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to extend the formal state milestone to March 31, 2023 to process sodium-bearing waste […]

Subcontractors could begin building a planned plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., by Dec. 31, the site’s prime contractor said Monday in a press release. “Construction is expected to begin before the end of this year,” the Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions wrote in the release. “Approximately 2,500 skilled craft […]

The Senate will hold its next votes on Nov. 14, leadership announced Thursday, meaning the upper chamber won’t consider its version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act until after the midterm elections. However, debate will begin on the annual, must-pass defense-policy bill on on Oct. 11, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) […]

As it prepares a second round of funding under a program aimed at propping up the aging U.S. nuclear fleet, the Department of Energy said in draft guidelines Friday that the upcoming bailouts need not be limited to plants facing imminent closure. The second round of DOE’s civil nuclear credits program “does not restrict eligibility […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office said last week it is again issuing a five-year, $2.5-million grant to Ohio University to further redevelopment work at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio. Since 2016, the university has received $8.2 million from the DOE Office of Environmental Management to advance stakeholder cleanup information and evaluate […]

Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based Navarro Research & Engineering has hired Susanna Waters as director of business development, to work with environmental and nuclear customers at NASA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. Waters has more than a decade of relevant business development experience, Navarro President and CEO Susana Navarro said in a September […]