Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) posted a video online over the weekend to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Tri-Party Agreement between Washington, D.C. and Washington state that governs cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. Inslee used the anniversary of the 1989 legal agreement between the Washington Department of Ecology, DOE and the […]

In a blow to Fluor and Amentum, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday it canceled a potentially 10-year, $28-billion contract for a joint venture of the two companies to manage the agency’s main nuclear-weapon production sites. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency awarded the big-money deal to the Nuclear Production One joint […]

A long-serving fed, Savannah River Site deputy manager Thomas Johnson Jr., planned to retire at the end of the month after 30 years with the Department of Energy and about 40 as a federal employee. Michael Budney, the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s top boss, announced the pending retirement Monday at a webcast meeting of […]

The clock is running down for financially troubled nuclear plants on the brink of shutdown to seek a federal bailout, the Department of Energy said Monday. Thursday is the deadline for interested applicants to submit their bids on a roughly $1.2 billion chunk of DOE’s $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, the Office of Nuclear […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not required to interview affected workers or record a March 1 public meeting about an incident last year that exposed 22 workers to radiation at a reactor near Richland, Wash., the regulator told one such worker’s lawyer on May 13. The decision not to talk to any of the workers […]

Around a month after a workplace injury paused decommissioning work at a California nuclear power plant, things are spooling back up again, the plant’s operator said last week. Decommissioning at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is “slowly ramping up” after operator Southern California Edison (SCE) put a hold on things to evaluate an April […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration was set Monday to kick off a major exercise in Austin, Texas, to train a long list of local, regional and state agencies about the proper response to a radiological incident. The Cobalt Magnet 22 exercise will be the such exercise held in three years, a spokesperson for the National […]

Carlos Alvardo will temporarily step in as the No. 2 fed at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, with Gabriel Pugh, the plant’s most recent deputy manager, leaving for the Department of Energy’s National Training Center, according to an internal email. Sunday was Alvardo’s first day as acting deputy manager at […]

The state of Tennessee kicked off a comment period this week about a long-debated low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Oak Ridge Site, which would replace one expected to reach capacity this decade, a citizens’ advisory board heard Wednesday. The comment period on the planned Environmental Management Disposal Facility (EMDF) began Monday and runs through […]

The company looking for state approval to purchase a Wisconsin nuclear power plant for decommissioning sought Wednesday to counter an advocacy group’s last-minute push for an independent technical review of the transaction, new filings show.  EnergySolutions told the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (WPSC) in a filing Wednesday that commissioners should ignore evidence submitted last week […]

One of the earliest employees at the Department of Energy, deputy general counsel Eric Fygi, is retiring this week about 45 years after joining the fledgling agency, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday. “Fygi has been with the Department since its inception in 1977,” a DOE spokesperson said via email. “[H]e is currently DOE’s fifth-longest-tenured Federal employee, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general pushed back Wednesday on claims by agency staff that the internal watchdog bent the facts in its review of the commission’s response to a 2020 safety issue at a California nuclear power plant, new documents show. NRC staff’s May 3 claim — that the inspector general took statements from […]

Michelle Reichert said she will retire May 20 as president and chief executive officer of Consolidated Nuclear Security, the outgoing management and operations contractor of the U.S.’ two main nuclear-weapon production plants. Bill Tindal, Consolidated Nuclear Security’s (CNS) chief operating officer, will become the acting president and CEO, according to a note from CNS board […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board this week added three new resident inspectors to monitor safety at Department of Energy sites in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Los Alamos, N.M. Clinton Jones is a new resident inspector for DOE’s Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) […]

The House Appropriations subcommittee in charge of writing the first draft of the Department of Energy’s annual budget called off a Wednesday hearing with the agency’s top nuclear weapons and waste leaders minutes into the proceedings. The hearing got no further than opening statements and a few questions from Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the chair, […]

The Department of Energy’s fiscal 2023 budget request for nuclear cleanup at the Idaho National Laboratory includes $10 million toward early planning for  treatment and disposal of 1.2 million gallons of high-level radioactive calcine waste. Under the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement governing disposal of spent fuel, DOE has until Dec. 31, 2035 to treat the […]

Senior officials with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Office of Environmental Management were set to take questions about their fiscal year 2023 budget requests Wednesday from House appropriators. The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee was scheduled to convene the hearing at 2:15 p.m. Eastern time on Capitol Hill. The […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 19 shipments of transuranic waste during April, according to the latest data. Eleven of the shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) were hauled from Idaho National Laboratory, six from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and two from the Savannah […]

The Department of Energy extended Centrus Energy Corp.’s contract to build a 16-machine enrichment cascade for advanced nuclear fuel at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, adding six months and $12 million to the sole-source deal. DOE extended the 80/20 cost-share contract on April 20, boosting the agency’s share of the pact, awarded in 2019, […]

The state of New Mexico hasn’t proven to a federal court that it has sufficient legal standing to challenge the licensing of a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Texas, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission argued Monday. NRC’s newest filing with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals aims to derail New Mexico Attorney […]

Companies that want to help the Department of Energy evaluate bids for financial aid from struggling nuclear power plants have until the end of the week to bid for the work, according to a recent procurement notice. DOE’s request for proposals, published May 6, says the selected contractor would help the agency ensure nuclear plants’ […]

The fiscal 2023 Department of Energy budget request for the Hanford Site in Washington state advances plans for a new $23-million fire station within Area 400, according to justification details posted online last week. The Joe Biden administration proposes $3.1-million toward the new fire station during the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The budget […]

Earnings fell at BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., in the first quarter, which the company attributed Monday to pension issues and lower productivity in the naval reactors business. Net earnings for the first quarter were $59 million or $0.64 per share, down from $69.7 million, or $0.73 a share, in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly revenue was […]

On paper at least, the Department of Energy expects 10 of the 15 remaining Cold War and Manhattan Project cleanups overseen by its $7.6-billion Office of Environmental Management to be cleaned up within 25 years. That is according to the annual chart of the Environmental Management’s (EM) office’s project schedule range, included in the 490-page […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed the Tennessee Valley Authority to work some people harder during an ongoing service outage at the Watts Bar 2 nuclear reactor, where the restart of tritium production for nuclear weapons has slipped to June from mid-May, the commission said. The outage now “is now scheduled to be completed by early […]

A plaintiff who filed suit against Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions in February, claiming the Department of Energy contractor forced him into premature retirement from the site’s fire department, threw in the towel last week, saying in a U.S. District Court filing the chances of victory are too slim without a lawyer. “It is nearly […]