Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

William Morrison planned to resign as chief executive officer of Veolia Nuclear Solutions’ U.S. Federal Services business effective Friday, the company announced Monday.  Steve Moore, the chief operating officer of the Federal Services business, was to become the interim CEO while the company searched for a permanent CEO, according to a press release.  The company […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week August 01-26 – United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. 10th Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference. United Nations Headquarters, New York. 16 –President Joe Biden planned to sign the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 37 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during the month of July, according to data from the agency’s public website. The site received 26 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory, eight from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, one from the Oak […]

A billion-dollar bailout proposed by the governor of California could help give the state’s last operating nuclear power plant a new lease on life, according to a draft bill published late last week. If draft legislation supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) becomes law, Sacramento could authorize the California Department of Water Resources “to make […]

President Joe Biden was scheduled Tuesday to sign into law a sweeping spending package that would, among other things, give nuclear power plant operators a tax break in hopes of keeping the U.S. reactor fleet humming along. If enacted, the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the House Friday on a 220-207 party line vote, would […]

The outcome of long term talks between Washington state and the federal government about liquid waste cleanup at the Hanford site will inform the Department of Energy’s future budget strategy for the sprawling plutonium production complex, the Secretary of Energy said Friday. Visiting the Hanford site for the first time last week, Jennifer Granholm, now […]

In keeping with a directive by Congress, a National Academies panel holds a fact-finding session next week on nuclear threats and weapons of mass destruction terrorism. The Nuclear Studies and Radiation Board (NRSB) of the National Academies plans a hybrid meeting for information-sharing between 12:45pm – 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday Aug. 15. The […]

The Department of Energy says the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project at the Hanford Site in Washington state has now pretreated 380,000 gallons of low-level radioactive tank waste before entering its latest outage on July 20. More than 182,000 gallons of tank waste was treated in Batch 2, which began on June 18 and concluded July […]

NuScale Power Corp. is still losing money, but at a slightly lesser pace than last year, according to its latest filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. NuScale leaders’ discussed the latest financial figures with analysts at a Wednesday teleconference. NuScale went public on May 2. For the quarter ending June 30, 2022, NuScale  […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is one step closer to having its executive committee back at full strength, as one of the agency’s two new top regulators took her oath of office this week, a spokesperson said. Annie Caputo was sworn in as an NRC commissioner Tuesday, an agency spokesperson told Exchange Monitor via email Wednesday. […]

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 capitol insurrection, Tuesday conceded her loss in Washington’s 3rd Congressional district primary on Aug. 2. “I’m proud that I always told the truth, stuck to my principles, and did what I knew to be […]

A University of Georgia research associate at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina was “treated and hospitalized for a few days for observation,” after being bitten by a poisonous copperhead snake July 22, a spokesperson said Wednesday. “The individual is fully recovered and returned to work,” Vicky Sutton-Jackson, a spokesperson for […]

With Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm set to visit the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state later this week, a coalition of organizations wrote President Joe Biden Tuesday urging a $1 billion increase in cleanup funding for the former plutonium production site. “Given its role as the workhorse for plutonium production, the scope of […]

A batch of documents were made public Monday after previously being under seal in the ongoing legal battle on whether Swift & Staley should have been disqualified for the new Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract awarded by the Department of Energy in December 2020. Swift & Staley, the Justice Department and a rival bidder for […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday submitted its last set of arguments against a coalition of anti-nuclear and other groups suing the agency over a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, court documents show. In its wrap-up brief, filed Monday with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, NRC doubled down on its argument that […]

Workers claiming Consolidated Nuclear Security shorted a slew of employees out of a paycheck’s worth of work are taking the management and operations contractor for two major nuclear-weapons production sites to trial next summer, according to a recent scheduling notice. The trial will begin on June 13, 2023, according to a scheduling order signed last […]

FirstEnergy is seeking the return of $56 million in bonuses to fired CEO Chuck Jones in the aftermath of the corporation’s bribery scandal, according to the company’s July 26 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. FirstEnergy fired Jones in October 2020 after the U.S. justice department charged former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder […]

While it has fixed the bad welds that plagued the program last decade, BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., is still having trouble manufacturing common missile compartment tubes for Columbia-, Virginia– and Dreadnought-class submarines, the company’s CEO said this week. “[W]e continue to have some struggles with the missile tubes program,” Rex Geveden, BWX Technologies’ (BWXT) chief […]

With less than a month left for nuclear plant operators to apply for the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program, the agency is leaving open the possibility that it will need extra time to review submissions, a spokesperson said Monday. Although DOE had said in April that it would notify awardees around 30 days […]

The federal government, slow to return to normal contracting operations after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, was largely to blame for continued operating losses at Perma-Fix Environmental Services during the second quarter of 2022, CEO Mark Duff said in the company’s latest earnings call with investors. For the second quarter, Perma-Fix reported a net […]

Japan and the United States have removed all highly enriched uranium from a research reactor at Kyoto University and shipped the material to the U.S, according to a press release from the National Nuclear Security Administration.  Transfer of the material began three years ago and ended with all 45 kilograms of the fissile isotope to […]

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, holds the No. 1 spot in a primary for his 4th Congressional district, while a similarly-situated Washington incumbent has lost her lead for the crucial runner-up slot in her primary. The Associated Press called the […]

A lawsuit against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, filed by about 80 employees who objected to its COVID-19 vaccination policy, was dismissed. The plaintiffs, led by Shawn Phillip Rhoades, and defendant Savannah River Nuclear Solutions filed a joint motion for dismissal dated Thursday in the U.S. […]

While it did not generate much chatter Monday during a quarterly earnings call focused on strong numbers, BWX Technologies is in the running for billions more in government contracts across the Department of Energy weapons complex over the next year. Having already won the $21-billion, 15-year Savannah River Integrated Mission contract for liquid waste cleanup […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to add protective services to its prime contract with the Nevada National Security Site’s Honeywell-led prime contract, according to a procurement note posted online recently.  SOC is the incumbent security services provider at the former Nevada Test Site under a five-year deal, worth about $200-million, that began on March […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is still “considering potential enforcement action” against the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch for failure to move stranded drums of transuranic waste out of Waste Control Specialists’ facility in Andrews County, a commission spokesperson said last week. The DOE Office of Environmental Management wrote the state July 11 […]

Bids were due Monday on a DOE contract to produce energy-dense uranium fuel using a cascade that Centrus Energy Corp. has nearly finished building at the agency’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. The potentially 10-year contract, officially opened to all bidders in June, calls for production of a much larger volume of high assay, low-enriched […]