Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The state of California Monday asked the Department of Energy to alter requirements for its recently-unveiled nuclear bailout to ensure the Golden State’s last operating nuclear power plant is eligible for an award during the agency’s first funding cycle. DOE’s April guidelines for its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program present “overly broad” restrictions […]

The Department of Energy on Wednesday opened bidding for a pair of new long-term contracts to manage Cold War uranium-enrichment cleanup in Ohio and Kentucky, one of which includes some work for active nuclear weapons programs.  The agency’s Office of Environmental Management, the nuclear-weapons cleanup steward, posted final solicitations online. The scheduled last day for […]

The Court of Federal Claims should let the Department of Energy sunset Swift & Staley’s existing contract for landlord services at the Paducah Site in Kentucky by May 31, 2023, the federal government repeated this week. Swift & Staley is the incumbent on the contract and had won a follow-on award to continue providing these […]

United Cleanup Oak Ridge this week started work under the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation Cleanup Contract, potentially worth up to $8.3 billion over 10 years. The Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UROR) includes partners Jacobs Engineering and Honeywell International with teaming subcontractors RSI EnTech, Strata-G, Longnecker & Associates and Environmental Alternatives. The company […]

Keeping California’s last nuclear power plant online would be “an outrage and a betrayal,” a coalition of anti-nuclear groups told the state governor in a letter last week, as the Golden State pondered whether to press for a federal bailout for the facility. Keeping Diablo Canyon Power Plant online past its scheduled 2025 shutdown date […]

Over the weekend the Russian Federation — which in February again invaded neighboring Ukraine — expanded a list of sanctions against U.S. citizens. Most of the U.S. citizens were federal lawmakers and some of those federal lawmakers have a history of involvement with, or a significant degree of power over, U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear […]

A prominent nuclear-professional organization on Tuesday rallied behind a proposed Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulemaking aimed at streamlining decommissioning of nuclear power plants. The American Nuclear Society (ANS) said in a statement Tuesday that it was “pleased” with NRC’s proposed changes to decommissioning regulations.  “This rulemaking has been under development for many years, and changes to […]

A Georgia congressman released a written request that House appropriators accept the White House’s funding request for the Savannah River Site’s proposed plutonium pit factory and reject a proposed cut for the site’s H-Canyon chemical separations plant.  Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) made the requests ahead of Wednesday’s scheduled Member’s Day hearing, an annual exercise in […]

Andrew Kline joined the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on Monday as an on-site inspector for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., the board announced Monday. Kline was previously a design engineer, operations process manager and project manager at the Savannah River Site, a former Cold War plutonium production complex with […]

The big Cerro Pelado wildfire outside Los Alamos that has been burning for a month has grabbed the headlines, but it was neither the only wildfire in New Mexico nor the only one near a National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear-weapons site last week. At the Sandia National Laboratories last week, workers reported the much smaller […]

Some nonproliferation news came out of President Joe Biden’s first trip to Asia today, when Biden and the Japanese prime minister announced the Savannah River Site and Y-12 National Security complex had taken delivery of a combined 30 kilograms of uranium from three Japanese facilities. The shipment, completed in March, was part of a four-year […]

The company aiming to purchase a Michigan nuclear power plant won’t expedite the process even though the site went offline earlier than expected, a spokesperson said Monday. Although Palisades Nuclear Generating Station shut down Friday, around 11 days earlier than its scheduled May 31 closure date, Holtec International has “no plans” to finalize the plant’s […]

On Friday, earlier than expected, a Michigan nuclear power plant shutdown for good, according to the utility in charge of the site. Although Palisades Nuclear Generating Station was scheduled for shutdown on May 31, plant staff made the “conservative” decision to bring it offline Friday “due to the performance of a control rod drive seal,” […]

Holtec International’s plan to dispose of a Massachusetts nuclear power plant’s irradiated wastewater meets regulatory requirements, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the head of a local town council in a recent letter. Holtec’s license with NRC allowing it to decommission Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station requires the company “to ensure that the releases of gaseous and […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration could do a better job tracking the performance of some $300 million worth of research and development activities in its Advanced Manufacturing Development program, the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report published Friday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency “may be using inconsistent measures across individual projects […]

The Cerro Pelado wildfire in New Mexico, which started a month ago today, was about 80% contained on Sunday, according to the latest update from state and federal agencies. Firefighters over the weekend gained a little ground on the blaze compared with last week, in part thanks to cooler temperatures and less intense winds. The […]