Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A draft energy and water development bill for fiscal 2023 posted last week by the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee directs the Department of Energy to spend $2 million on a “reindustrialization” study at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The document did not provide any detail on the scope of the study or when […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 01-26 – United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. 10th Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference. United Nations Headquarters, New York.  2 – The Department of Energy was scheduled to host an open meeting of […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday joined the licensee of a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in rejecting arguments that a recent Supreme Court decision invalidated the project’s license, court filings show. The new argument from local stakeholders and environmental groups center on the so-called major questions doctrine the Supreme Court invoked […]

Congress should enact legislation to clarify the Department of Energy’s authority to sell depleted uranium to private entities, the Government Accountability Office said this week, because such a move could curb the $7.2 billion cost to dispose of the material. As of September 2021, the feds estimate it could cost DOE $7.2 billion to convert […]

U.S. District Judge Julianna Michelle Childs, who presided over a number of Department of Energy nuclear cases in South Carolina, and who was publicly discussed as a contender for a U.S. Supreme vacancy, has won confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Childs was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit […]

The Department of Energy has formalized its plans to build an advanced reactor at one of its national laboratories, the agency said in a press release Wednesday. In a record of decision document, DOE said it would aim to build its Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) at Idaho National Laboratory, the agency said. If Congress appropriates […]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to advance the White House’s nominees to fill out the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the panel said in a press release. If the full Senate gives the green light to Annie Caputo and Bradley Crowell, they will fill two positions on the nuclear safety regulator’s executive […]

With the retirement of a top executive, Sharon Smoot will step in as president of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group effective Aug. 1, the company said in a press release Wednesday morning. In her new role, Smoot will be responsible for the operations group’s complete range of nuclear components and services, “including the manufacture of […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth earned 75% of its total potential fee and about 82% of its subjective fee from the Department of Energy for its cleanup work at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio for the 12-month period ended March 28, according to a just-released scorecard. Overall, the contractor took home $16.6 million out of a potential $22.1 […]

National TRU Solutions, a joint venture evidently led by Huntington Ingalls Industries, filed a bid protest Tuesday challenging the Department of Energy’s selection of a Bechtel entity for a contract worth up to $3 billion to operate the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. A notice of the TRU Solutions bid protest is posted […]

The inventory of defense-related transuranic waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico amounts to more than 3,300 containers, but most are not “ready to ship” to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office manager said last week. While the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) has 2,273 […]

The utility company in charge of decommissioning a California nuclear power plant is preparing to ship some heavy reactor parts out of state to a low-level disposal facility, according to a recent press release. The reactor pressure vessel head of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s (SONGS) Unit 2 reactor “will be leaving the site soon,” […]

Despite assertions made by an anti-nuclear group suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a recent Supreme Court decision doesn’t affect NRC’s authority to license a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in West Texas, the company in charge of the project argued Monday. The high court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA “has nothing […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has treated over 991,000 gallons of waste so far in fiscal 2022, a Department of Energy official told the Citizens Advisory Board for the site Monday.   “We just recently completed a planned outage,” July 12 at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), […]

The Government Accountability Office is urging the Department of Energy to provide more details on how its nuclear weapons and cleanup programs handle federal funds carried over from prior-year budgets. At the end of fiscal 2021 the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) had about $3.2 billion in total carryover balances, and the National Nuclear […]

Street Legal Industries, a woman-owned small business based in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has landed two contracts together worth up to $3 million for support services at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to notices posted last week on a federal procurement website, SAM.gov. The general services work includes a wide range […]

A top federal manager for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said Monday the agency is continuing to investigate the cause of a July 4 spill of low-level radioactively contaminated water near H Canyon. “We are taking a very hard look at exactly what occurred,” Michael Budney, the DOE Office of […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was scheduled this week to consider a proposed bill that would create an independent federal agency to oversee the development of nuclear waste storage sites. The new organization proposed in Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) Nuclear Waste Administration Act, set for debate Thursday during a meeting of the upper […]

About 2,500 union workers at Boeing manufacturing facilities in the St. Louis area could strike Aug. 1, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other news outlets reported Sunday after members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 837 voted to reject a contract offer. The St. Louis area plants specialize in national defense […]

The Department of Energy has extended by one week, until 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 1, the bid deadline for the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Contract, potentially worth $2.9 billion over 10 years. The earlier deadline for proposals was today for the contract that includes conversion of depleted uranium […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 24-28 – Institute for Nuclear Materials Management, Virtual Annual Meeting. No in-person participation. Registration required and to be available here. 25: The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board in South Carolina starts a two-day meeting at […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is preparing to lease office warehouse and storage space in northern New Mexico and Colorado, according to a notice posted online late last week. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency is considering leases within a 150-mile radius of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to an environmental impact […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments said it will investigate the radioactive contamination in January of some Triad National Security employees at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility. The facility is in the early stages of an overhaul and expansion necessary for the lab to annually produce 30 war-ready plutonium pits […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is trying to kickstart a solution to U.S. nuclear waste storage problems, usurping Congress’ constitutional authority in the process, an anti-nuclear group argued Wednesday in its lawsuit over commercial interim storage. Beyond Nuclear’s Wednesday comments to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals were the latest in the anti-nuclear group’s ongoing struggle […]

The legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in August plans to start the site’s largest radioactive waste extraction effort in more than a decade, a company executive told a federal advisory board Thursday. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) vice president Joe Legare said in August the contractor […]