Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The state of Texas was scheduled Monday to present its ongoing case against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s ability to license interim waste storage to a federal court, court documents show. The oral argument session, planned for Monday at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ New Orleans courthouse, could be the first legal test of Texas […]

Life extensions for existing Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines should take some of the pressure off the Navy’s beleaguered Columbia-class replacements for those boats, the service’s head of acquisition for nuclear-armed submarines said recently. Building more Columbia boats than now planned in the 2030s could also help, Rear Adm. Scott Pappano, the Navy’s program executive officer […]

For the seven days ended Thursday, Aug. 25, there were 84 confirmed onsite cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management worksites, according to a spokesperson. That is 69 less than the prior week’s total of 153, the spokesperson said in a Thursday email. The DOE recently said it is discontinuing […]

After being criticized for foot-dragging, the Department of Energy and Washington state announced an agreement Thursday Aug. 25 to address two leaking underground radioactive tanks at the Hanford Site, as well as future tank leaks. Under a binding order, the federal agency and the Washington Department of Ecology agreed by 2028 to cover the site’s […]

Holtec International is getting the ball rolling on a construction permit to build one of its proposed advanced nuclear reactors at the site of a former New Jersey nuclear power plant as it aims to be among the first companies to deploy advanced nuclear technologies, the company said Tuesday in a press release.  Holtec, which […]

California’s state Senate was scheduled Thursday to discuss a proposed billion-dollar bailout for the Golden State’s last operating nuclear power plant, according to a meeting notice. During the hearing, the state Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee was to discuss the proposed bailout, which would allow Sacramento to loan up to $1.4 billion to Pacific […]

Land clearing and preparation of haul roads is underway for the final three super-sized Saltstone Disposal Units at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the agency said last week. Work crews are also grading the property and installing underground utility lines for the planned Saltstone Disposal Units (SDUs) 10, 11 and […]

As part of a long-running legal slog, Swift & Staley’s attorneys say they could make the case this year for why the company should have won a small-business set-aside award for landlord services at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky. But Swift & Staley Inc. (SSI), the incumbent landlord services provider, won’t be […]

Joel Spangenberg, the first executive director of operations for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, is leaving the agency to become deputy director of the Selective Service System.  Spangenberg, a member of the government’s senior executive service, is leaving the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) and should start his job with Selective Service on […]

Republican congressional staffer Joe Sempolinski is the apparent winner of a special election Tuesday for New York’s 23rd Congressional District, enabling him to serve out the final months in the unexpired term of his old boss, former Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.). According to press reports, Sempolinski captured roughly 52% of the vote against Democrat Max […]

Longtime Los Alamos National Laboratory manager Carolyn Zerkle will become deputy director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory effective Sept. 12, the California nuclear-weapon design lab announced Monday. Zerkle spent more than 30 years at Los Alamos, most recently as senior director for project execution. In that job, she was responsible for the entire portfolio […]

Voters in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, which includes the West Valley Demonstration Project nuclear cleanup site, were to go to the polls Tuesday to decide who they want to fill the final months in the unexpired term of former Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.). Democratic Party candidate Max Della Pia goes up against Republican Joe […]

John Cowles, who at the turn of the century was chief engineer for the nation’s only federally-authorized repository for high-level nuclear-power waste, passed away in his sleep July 22, according to an obituary published in The Boston Globe Thursday. He was 88 years old. Cowles, who began his nearly 40 years in the energy industry […]

Lisa Daley Mangi will step in as the acting chief of staff for the National Nuclear Security Administration on Aug. 31, agency administration Jill Hruby said Monday. Daley Mangi, the current deputy general counsel for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency, will stand in for Doug Fremont, who planned to retire.  Fremont, a […]

Three years in prison are too few for a former Naval Reactors employee who wanted to sell stolen nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign government, a federal judge said last week. Thursday’s pronouncement by Judge Gina Groh, a Barack Obama appointee in the U.S. District Court for West Virginia’s Northern District, blew up a government […]

Robert Duffy took over as BWX Technologies’ top human resources and administrative executive, the company said Monday in a press release. Duffy, most recently with L3Harris Technologies, replaced Rick Loving as senior vice president and chief administrative officer, the Lynchburg, Va.-based nuclear-navy and Department of Energy contractor wrote in release, which was appended to an […]

An inspection at a former Massachusetts nuclear power plant under decommissioning by Holtec International revealed just one small issue related to radiation safety procedures, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the company in a recent letter. Holtec staff working at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station “failed to survey the levels of airborne radioactivity” inside the plant’s drywell, […]

Jacobs, which swallowed CH2M Hill in 2017 to boost its presence in the Department of Energy contracting market, planned to rebrand itself as Jacobs Solutions effective Aug. 29, the Dallas-based company disclosed Friday. Presently known as Jacobs Engineering Group, the company told investors and regulators about the planned rebrand in an 8-k filing with the […]

The Department of Energy said Friday it is dropping most pandemic-related safeguards, such as COVID-19 screening and collection of vaccination data for employees and contractors— although indoor mask mandates remain in place in areas with high transmission rates. The DOE announced its “Updated COVID-19 Workplace Safety and Reentry Framework” in an email to “Team DOE” […]

After a 40-year career in the energy industry, Entergy’s chief executive Leo Denault plans to retire in the new year, the company announced Tuesday in a press release. Andrew Marsh, currently Entergy’s CFO and executive vice president, will replace Denault after he leaves in 2023, according to a statement. As part of the New Orleans-based […]