Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) has prepared an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, up for debate this week, that could withhold 10% of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget until the agency completes more reports about its plans to manufacture new nuclear-weapon cores. The amendment would alter the draft of the fiscal year 2023 […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 21: Markup, House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee. Fiscal year 2023 subcommittee appropriations bill. This is the first draft of the bill that includes the Department of Energy’s budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. […]

Completion of the depleted uranium conversion program at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky could take three decades or more, an agency boss told the Paducah Site Citizens Advisory Board in Kentucky last week. Even before the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) plants in Paducah and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio went offline in […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had 115 onsite cases of COVID-19 in the seven-days ended Thursday, unchanged from the week before, according to a spokesperson for the nuclear cleanup office. That’s 21 more onsite cases than the 94 the Office of Environmental Management confirmed during the week ended June 2 and about […]

It might be years before there is any legal way for the Department of Energy to build a federally operated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel before first building a permanent repository, the agency’s acting head of nuclear waste management said at an industry conference Wednesday. “We recognize that there are a limited amount […]

While working on a new follow-on contract for haulage of defense-related transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., the Department of Energy has moved to keep incumbent CAST Specialty Transportation in place a little longer. The Carlsbad Transportation Services Contract held by the small business since June 2017 is now scheduled […]

Triad National Security has made the Los Alamos National Laboratory a little safer since taking over as the prime contractor in 2018, but the National Nuclear Security Administration believes there is more work to do, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. Since taking the reins from Los Alamos National Security — removed eight […]

California’s senior senator announced in an op-ed Wednesday that she had changed her mind about the closure of the state’s last operating nuclear power plant and now supports keeping the facility online as a source of carbon-free power. With climate change and worsening drought conditions threatening California’s electricity supply, “Pacific Gas and Electric Co. [PG&E] […]

The Department of Energy expects priority work at the Moab uranium tailings site in Utah to be largely done within four years, officials with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during a virtual briefing Wednesday. “We are getting close to closure,” at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings project, said Russell McCallister, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has not won Rep. Adam Smith’s (D-Wash.) unconditional trust, but it has convinced him to authorize the agency’s plan to produce plutonium pits in two states, the House Armed Services chair told reporters Wednesday. “Yes, I believe we are going to move forward with what the NNSA [National Nuclear Security […]

Constellation Energy can use funds set aside for decommissioning a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant to cover site management expenses after the plant is dismantled, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday. The NRC on June 8 allowed Constellation to dip into a decommissioning trust fund for Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 1 reactor (TMI-1) […]

While construction is essentially complete, hurdles remain to starting up the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant by the end of 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Department of Energy still estimates the direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) portion of the plant will begin turning some liquid, radioactive tank waste into glass logs […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 12 shipments during May, according to the public website for the disposal site. The dozen shipments in May 2022 are eight fewer than the 20 recorded in May 2021. So far during the calendar year 2022, the underground salt mine has received 67 […]

The American public might be broadly receptive to recycling spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy’s recently confirmed assistant secretary for nuclear energy told a professional gathering Tuesday. “I really hope that we can kind of bring some attention to the value in recycling spent nuclear fuel,” Kathryn Huff, the new head of DOE’s nuclear […]

The planned meeting this week of the Department of Energy’s Idaho Citizens Advisory Board has been called off, according to a recent notice on the panel’s website. “Due to limited participation in our upcoming June [15] meeting and tour, DOE has decided it best to cancel the meeting,” according to a May 26 notice for […]

Hanford workers in Washington State who unsuccessfully challenged the site’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in federal district court are taking their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A group of 317 federal and contractor employees at the Hanford Site, three of whom say they have been fired from their jobs, filed […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory will end on-site COVID-19 testing in July and shift most of the responsibility for preventing the spread of the disease on site to employees, according to a memo from lab director Thomas Mason. “Although regional case rates are expected to decrease over the next several weeks, public health experts predict COVID-19 […]

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee was set to mark up the first draft of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2023 budget on Wednesday, and the bill contains no funding for the nuclear-tipped Sea Launched Cruise Missile, according to a summary the subcommittee released Tuesday morning. The legislation, telegraphed in March by the recommendation in President Joe Biden’s […]

Six employees at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have agreed to settle their lawsuit contesting the COVID-19 vaccination policy implemented by prime contractor UT-Battelle, according to a document filed in federal court Monday. In a one-page “mediator’s report to the court” attorney Chadwick Hatmaker of the Knoxville law firm Woolf-McClane, […]

The subcontractor in charge of sinking a new utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., needs to fix potential safety hazards, the federal agency said in a recent assessment. While prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership and subcontractor Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers have a “generally adequate construction safety program,” they […]

Three uranium processing systems for nuclear weapons at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will be delayed for six months or more, a federal nuclear safety agency reported last week. Y-12’s electrorefining and direct chip melt front-loading furnace projects each will be delayed six months, according to a recent report by the […]

In less than two months, a federal judge may hear oral arguments in the state of Texas’s lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the Lone Star State, court documents show. If the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals holds such an oral session, tentatively scheduled […]

A coalition of environmental groups in a letter last week urged the governor of Michigan to walk back her plans to secure a federal bailout for a recently-closed nuclear power plant in the Great Lakes State. “We urge you in the strongest terms to cease and desist from your efforts to bail out the Palisades […]

State lawmakers in South Carolina were set this week to approve distribution of $525 million from a federal settlement the state won in 2020 after the Department of Energy failed to meet deadlines for removing plutonium from the Savannah River Site. The bicameral state legislature’s House and Senate each were set to convene at 12 […]

An article in the June 9 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“Nuclear cleanup leadership should be built to ‘span administrations,’ GAO reviewer says”] should have reported the DOE Office of Environmental Management is responsible for a half-trillion-dollars’ worth of environmental liability.