Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee is neutral on whether the Department of Energy should lead any revived federal research effort on potential health impacts of low-dose radiation, the head of the panel, said Friday. Tribal communities and atomic workers “generally do not support” a DOE-run low-dose radiation program, Joe Gray, professor […]

A small modular reactor developer recently unveiled its first public financial figures, which indicate the company will be in the red for quite a while as it presses ahead with its bid to reshape the nuclear power landscape.   After filing numerous reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in May and late April, NuScale […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering allowing the company that owns Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 1 reactor to dip into plant funds set aside for decommissioning to cover costs incurred after the plant has been fully dismantled, the agency said Monday. In a finding of no significant impact (FONSI) notice published on […]

Spent fuel reprocessing operations will cease next month and work will shift totally to cleanup at the Sellafield Magnox plant in northern England, according to a recent press release from the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield Ltd. Since 1964, the plant has reprocessed about 55,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from the […]

Amentum, leading contractor for the Department of Energy and other government agencies, last week outlined management roles for a new National Security business group that the Maryland-based company is putting together under a corporate reshuffling by the new CEO.   “Today, I am announcing the leaders of each of these three businesses [within National Security], as […]

A New England conservation group last week added its voice to the growing chorus of opposition to Holtec International’s strategy for dealing with irradiated wastewater from a shuttered Massachusetts nuclear power plant. The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) urged Holtec “to abandon all plans” to release water from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into the nearby […]

Note from Benjamin S. Weiss, Exchange Monitor’s civilian nuclear power reporter. Good morning from sunny Summerlin, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, where the Exchange Monitor’s annual Decommissioning Strategy Forum will begin at 1:00 p.m. Pacific, 3:00 p.m. Eastern time.  Look for a daily dispatch of the two-day event’s proceedings, including industry and government speakers discussing […]

The Arms Control Association’s annual meeting was scheduled to begin in Washington Thursday morning, with addresses from U.S. and U.N. officials planned throughout the proceedings, the disarmament-advocating group said. The Washington-based non-government group was scheduled to hold the meeting at the National Press Club in Washington, a few blocks from the White House, beginning at […]

After working out various kinks since late December, the Department of Energy has resumed its demonstration run of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory, a spokesperson said Wednesday. Following a successful heat-up, waste simulant processing resumed on May 23, a DOE spokesperson said in an email. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety […]

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) planned to visit the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site Thursday and will be joined by officials from the Washington state Department of Ecology, according to an advisory issued through the governor’s office Wednesday. Ecology Director Laura Watson and the state’s agency’s nuclear waste program manager David Bowen will join Inslee […]

The company behind an advanced reactor design insisted Wednesday that its technology was misrepresented by a scathing university report published earlier this week. NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) design “does not create waste and material streams that are novel to the nuclear power industry,” a spokesperson for the company told Exchange Monitor in a statement […]

In early fall, Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will recommend whether the civilian nuclear energy regulator should overhaul federal rules about securing special nuclear material, an agency official said during a public meeting on Wednesday. Staff were due to turn in their notation vote paper to the commission by September, said Marshall Kohen, a technical assistant […]

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash), whose 4th Congressional district in Washington state includes the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, is facing multiple fellow Republicans, one of them a former NASCAR driver and another backed by former President Donald Trump, in an August primary, according to Ballotpedia.org. Jerrod Sessler is the best-funded of the four Republican challengers […]

The Department of Energy is considering the California governor’s request to alter the agency’s multibillion-dollar nuclear power bailout to allow a plant in the Golden State to apply for a payout, a spokesperson said Tuesday. DOE is “currently reviewing” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) May 23 letter to the agency asking it to loosen restrictions on […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s new high-performance computing system, called Venado, assembled by Hewlett Packard and to be delivered in 2023, will be the first in the U.S. powered by the Grace central processing unit designed by Nvidia, the lab said. The lab announced the impending delivery of its next high-performance computer system last week […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s airborne, radiation-sniffing Nuclear Emergency Support Team was to begin the first of four days of background sampling over Los Angeles on Wednesday ahead of the Ninth Summit of the Americas, the agency said. Ahead of the meeting of government, industry and community representatives from each American continent, a low-flying National […]

Following the solicitation of new long-term contracts for its Portsmouth and Paducah sites, the Department of Energy plans to extend the incumbents at both sites for up to six months, according to procurement notes published recently.  In a procurement notice Friday, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced its intent to extend decontamination and decommissioning […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says continued storage of potentially-combustible transuranic waste at Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas until Dec, 31, 2024, should not result in a significant environmental impact. The Friday finding of no significant impact in the Federal Register clears the way for continued stopgap storage of up to 74 remaining containers […]

Results of a recent Stanford University-led study ran counter to the nuclear industry’s claims that advanced reactors won’t significantly add to radioactive waste stockpiles around the world, the university said in a press release published Monday. According to Stanford’s statement, the study — due to eb published Monday in the academic journal Proceedings of the […]

The Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has entered an outage this month as it prepares to switch over from formic acid to glycolic acid by October. Going with glycolic acid at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) should lead to more efficient conversion of radioactive […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: June 01: Meeting. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Transformation at the NRC—Sustaining Progress as Modern, Risk-Informed Regulator.” In person at NRC headquarters, Commissioners’ Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md. and streaming online at 10 a.m. Eastern time. 02: […]

The on-again, off-again demonstration run of the Department of Energy’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory should be on again in June, according to a federal nuclear-safety overseer. After an outage during March and April, the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was to begin heating up in early May, according to a […]

Bids for Long-term Management and Storage of elemental mercury are due to the Department of Energy by 4 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday, while questions on the last week’s solicitations for new contracts at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky are due a week later, the agency said. Since DOE’s Office […]

The leader of the House Armed Services Committee said Monday he sees “tough fights” ahead over President Biden’s proposals to cut the Navy’s nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile program and retire B-83 gravity bombs as Congress takes up the next defense policy bill. Committee chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said he agreed with both policy proposals […]

The head of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management field office at Los Alamos National Laboratory lavished praise on 1,000 firefighters who battled the Cerro Pelado wildfire in New Mexico, which as of Wednesday was 92% contained. The residents who lived through major past fires in the region went through “a traumatic experience,” said environmental […]