Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Energy now expects to replace an aging electrical substation on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant grounds near Carlsbad, N.M., in 2023, a spokesperson said Tuesday. The substation replacement project is now planned for “the spring time frame,” a spokesperson for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) said in an email reply to […]

Speaking to state lawmakers last week, Holtec International’s interim storage chief sought to allay fears that the company’s proposed spent fuel storage facility in the Land of Enchantment would become a permanent repository for nuclear waste. “Interim storage — and it is interim — will be measured in decades,” Ed Mayer, the project lead for […]

The U.S. Air Force launched its second unarmed Minuteman III test in the early hours of Wednesday morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, ramping up dry runs for the land-based nuclear-launch vehicle following a pause after Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in late February. The test launch, which took place at 4:13 a.m. […]

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D), Nevada’s junior U.S. senator, announced Tuesday she is working from home with a mild case of COVID-19. Rosen, who ousted former Sen. Dean Heller (R) in 2018 to turn the state’s upper-chamber delegation blue, is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee that annually authorizes defense programs, including those at […]

Operators of financially-troubled nuclear power plants are about out of time to apply for the first round of federal bailouts through the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program. Tuesday is the deadline for the first $1.2 billion funding cycle under DOE’s nuclear credits program, unveiled as part of the White House’s November bipartisan infrastructure […]

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) late last week signed a bill aimed at keeping the Golden State’s last operating nuclear plant online into the next decade, his office said. The legislation, which Newsom signed into law Friday afternoon, authorizes the California Department of Water Resources to loan Diablo Canyon Power Plant operators Pacific Gas & […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 07: Meeting, Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) Chairs. 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. Eastern time. La Fonda on the Plaza, La Terraza Meeting Room, 100 East San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501. And streaming […]

Discovery of radioactive contamination on a transuranic waste transportation container in August prompted the Department of Energy to pause certain work at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., a spokesperson said Friday. During maintenance on Aug. 24, a staffer spotted an “unexpected substance” near the bottom of the shipping container, a Waste Isolation […]

The Department of Energy granted a request by Los Alamos National Laboratory’ cleanup contractor in New Mexico to resume “drilling and draining” containers with free liquids to prepare them for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an agency spokesperson said Friday. DOE has also endorsed plans by Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) to […]

The prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is investigating two separate incidents where technical safety requirement violations occurred at the disposal facility for defense-related transuranic waste, a spokesperson said late Wednesday. The incidents that led to the violations occurred Aug. 15 and Aug. 16, said the spokesperson […]

California lawmakers on Wednesday passed an eleventh-hour bill that, if signed into law, would help keep the Golden State’s last operating nuclear power plant running into the next decade. The state Senate passed the proposed measure 31-1 late on Wednesday night, the final scheduled day of the legislative session. The bill would give the California […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration sole-sourced a real-estate development contract to Tucson, Ariz.-based Tierra Right of Way to procure a parcel of land for the Kansas City National Security Campus in Missouri, which is “in dire need of new facilities.” The Kansas City National Security Campus, operated by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, is the […]

Due in part to this year’s Cerro Pelado wildfire, the New Mexico Environment Department has given the cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory until Oct. 30 to perform sampling connected with a hexavalent chromium plume. The state agency officially granted a two-month extension in an Aug. 24 letter to the […]

The Department of Energy expects next month to publish its key findings from a review of hundreds of public comments on its ongoing effort to site a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, an agency spokesperson said Wednesday. DOE is “going through the formal review process” for its November request for information (RFI) […]

Vector Resources, a women owned small business, recently protested the award of a potentially $53 million technical and administrative services contract at the Y-12 National Security Site to Sigma Science.  Vector lodged two protests about the award with the Government Accountability Officer on Monday, the congressional investigator said on its website. Work under Sigma Science’s […]

Citing someone who might be interested in a public hearing about the decision, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing more time for complaints about a license amendment that Nuclear Fuel Services needs to purify uranium for nuclear-weapons programs, the commission wrote Tuesday in the Federal Register. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has extended the window […]

The Department of Energy Office of Enterprise Assessments is satisfied overall with safety programs Bechtel National is developing for a waste solidification plant aiming to start up late next year at the Hanford Site in Washington state, but says improvements are needed. One area the agency should address prior to startup of Direct-Feed-Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week gave litigators for contractor Swift & Staley as well as the Department of Justice seven days to specify dates in December they won’t be available for oral arguments. “Briefing is completed in this case,” the appeals court said in a Monday order, instructing litigators […]

As the California legislature weighs a billion-dollar bailout to keep the state’s last operating nuclear power plant running through the next decade, opponents of the proposal are sounding the alarm about the safety and transparency of such action. Representatives from anti-nuclear groups such as Beyond Nuclear, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the Coalition […]

Web-savvy observers might notice the Department of Energy’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center on Friday overhauled the look and feel of its current procurements website. The redesigned website appears to provide the same previously-available documents and videos on planned requests for proposals (RFP) and market research in an easier-to-follow format. The website appears to […]

An air-launched cruise missile warhead was not the only major civilian nuclear-weapons program slowed by COVID-19 supply chain snafus, but it was the only one drastically affected by the pandemic response, a senior government official said Tuesday. “I wouldn’t say it was the only one that was impacted,” said Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser, principal […]

A federal judge Monday cast some doubt on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in west Texas. During an oral argument session in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Edith Jones, part of a three-member panel presiding over the state of Texas’s lawsuit against […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board wants the Department of Energy and its legacy cleanup contractor to prioritize a new safety analysis for the waste handling area of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that is currently in limited operations. Since January 2020, contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) has declared 24 […]

The Joe Biden administration overstepped its authority by utilizing the Procurement Act to impose a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most employees of government contractors, a federal appeals court said Friday. However, a federal district judge in Georgia went too far in issuing a nationwide injunction against the contractor vaccine mandate, the panel of judges for […]

Brandon Weathers is headed back to Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board headquarters in Washington after wrapping up a four-year stint as a resident inspector at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the board said recently. Weathers now will join the independent federal nuclear inspector’s Nuclear Programs and Analysis group, the board wrote in a […]

California state lawmakers introduced a bill over the weekend that, if made law, would toss a billion-dollar lifeline to the state’s last operating nuclear power plant. The proposed legislation, unveiled Sunday only days before the scheduled end of the state’s legislative session, would nullify a 2018 order from the California Public Utilities Commission approving shutdown […]