Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

Hiking trails around Los Alamos National Laboratory, maintained by Los Alamos County, N.M., and the Department of Energy, closed over the weekend due to the Cerro Pelado fire in the Jemez Mountains and the lab announced it is restricting some staff to telework effective Monday.  The wildfire that has burned almost 37,000 acres since April […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 09: BWX Technologies holds a quarterly earnings conference call with financial analysts at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. 11: The Oak Ridge Environmental Management Site Advisory Board meets in public session starting at 6 p.m. E.T. To attend, […]

Earnings dipped at Leidos Holdings, Reston, Va., in the first quarter, which federal contractor attributed to in part to a $26 million benefit received a year earlier by one of its Department of Energy joint ventures. Net earnings for the quarter were $177 million, or $1.25 diluted earnings per share, down from $205 million, or […]

The company in charge of decommissioning a Massachusetts nuclear power plant won’t discharge the site’s irradiated wastewater into a nearby bay without getting a green light from the community and environmental experts, its CEO told a member of Congress during a field hearing on Friday. During the remote hearing of the Senate Environment and Public […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management could improve its cost and schedule oversight for big-ticket projects such as the Hanford Site’s multi-billion-dollar Waste Treatment Plant in Washington state, the Government Accountability Office said this week. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Wednesday it did a performance audit from December 2020 to April 2022 […]

Kathryn Huff, the White House’s pick for assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy, cleared the full Senate this week, clinching her spot as head of the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office. The Senate voted 80-11 Thursday to confirm Kathryn Huff, who the Joe Biden administration first nominated in January to lead DOE’s Office […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration won’t be able to make 80 pits annually by 2030 even if Congress throws more money at the problem this year, the agency’s top official and the Pentagon’s acquisition chief both told Senators Wednesday in a hearing “The nuclear weapons council stands by the assessment that was provided, that I […]

Since FirstEnergy cannot prove it spent $456 million to modernize its power grid as legally required, an Ohio state consumer watchdog agency wants the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to penalize the Akron corporation three times that amount, in accordance with state law. That translates to a penalty of almost $1.4 billion. The Ohio Consumers […]

A round-up of public comments on how the Department of Energy should go about siting a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel should be published before Labor Day, the agency said Wednesday. DOE “is working to analyze the comments” on its interim storage request for information (RFI) unveiled in November, an agency spokesperson […]

NuScale Power Corp, a Corvallis, Ore., developer of small modular reactors, went public on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday. The company on April 28 formally completed a merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, to form NuScale Power Corp., the company announced Monday. The acquisition company is a […]

During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pronounced herself “really disappointed with this year’s request” by the Department of Energy for cleanup of the Hanford Site in her home state. The Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2023 request of $2.5 billion for Hanford was not only […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission took issue Tuesday with a report from its inspector general suggesting that the agency had been lax in its inspection of a soon-to-close nuclear power plant, according to new documents. Although NRC’s inspector general alleged in a March report that an improper inspection of Diablo Canyon Power Plant back in 2020 […]

To slow turnover in the top ranks of federal nuclear remediation, the Government Accountability Office is recommending Congress create a new Department of Energy post, under secretary for nuclear waste management and environmental cleanup. As envisioned in the Government Accountability Office report, the DOE’s $7.6-billion Office of Environmental Management (EM) would be siloed beneath this […]

Members of the joint Department of Energy-Pentagon body that coordinates nuclear weapon procurements were set to testify late this afternoon before a Senate Armed Services panel. The six-member Nuclear Weapons Council is dominated by Pentagon personnel and chaired by the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment — William LaPlante, in the Joe Biden administration. […]

As of late Tuesday, the Cerro Pelado fire in New Mexico was five-and-a-half miles away from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, with no evacuations ordered so far around the federal facility. Lab management could reduce its on-site headcount, however, if the fire inches much closer to Los Alamos National Laboratory or the […]

The White House Tuesday announced its nominees to fill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s two open executive seats, including one former commissioner who left the agency last summer. If Annie Caputo and Bradley Crowell’s nominations, which the Joe Biden administration announced in a press release Tuesday, get through Congress, they would fill two seats on NRC’s […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has updated its pending 10-year permit renewal application with the state of New Mexico to reflect the latest plans for transuranic waste disposal within the mine’s Panels 11 and 12. The proposal was submitted as part of the facility’s updated permit renewal application with the New Mexico […]

The interested public now has until the end of the summer to provide their feedback on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed rules change for decommissioning nuclear power plants, the agency said Tuesday.  August 30 is now the deadline for comments on NRC’s proposed decommissioning rulemaking, the agency said in presentation slides for an upcoming public […]

Certain people sickened after exposure to radiation from either atmospheric nuclear-weapon tests or uranium mining would get two more years to file for government compensation if a bill passed unanimously by the Senate last week becomes law. The Senate unanimously passed the bipartisan Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Extension Act of 2022 on Thursday, giving […]

Earnings rose at Jacobs, Dallas, in the second quarter of its fiscal 2022 year, which the international engineering and construction company attributed to increased demand across virtually all business lines. Net earnings for the quarter ended April 1 were $89 million, or $0.68 a share, up from net earnings of zero in the year-ago quarter, […]

Don Hardy, the manager of the Department of Energy’s 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site, plans to retire on May 12 after 37 years at the former plutonium production complex in Washington state, the lab contractor said Monday. Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration (HLMI) said in a press release that Hardy will be succeeded […]

Effective mid-July, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to split its two main procurement offices in Washington into three and, in the process, eliminate the Office of Acquisition and Project Management and the Office of Infrastructure and Operations, agency Administrator Jill Hruby said Monday in an email to all hands. After the split, the duties […]

President Joe Biden’s plans to cease development of a nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile and to cancel a refresh for the B83 megaton-capable gravity bomb won’t make it through Congress, a key Republican House member predicted Monday. “The president’s budget’s talking about getting rid of the sea-launched cruise missile and some of the B83 gravity bombs, […]