Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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, […]

In what could be a reversal of fortune for Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the governor of California is weighing whether to bid on a federal bailout for the Golden State’s last operating nuclear power facility, he said last week. State Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) told the LA Times editorial board Friday that a bid on […]

A federal court could soon decide whether to hear the case of several Consolidated Nuclear Security employees who sued the Y-12 National Security Complex prime contractor in 2020 allegeding lost wages. Last week, the three employees, who seek to create a class-action lawsuit, filed a second amended complaint with the U.S. District Court for Eastern […]

The Cerro Pelado fire in New Mexico was only six miles from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory’s property as of 9:45 p.m. local time, the laboratory announced via its Twitter account (@LosAlamosNatLab) late Sunday. The fire is “pushing southeast” and no Los Alamos County evacuations are planned currently and a section of […]

Key claims in a lawsuit brought by residents living in the shadow of a former gaseous diffusion plant in Ohio are barred on various grounds, including the government contractor defense, current and former Department of Energy contractors for the Portsmouth Site said last week. Defendants Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and others filed their motion April […]

03: Jacobs will report on quarterly earnings in a conference call with analysts at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.  03: Leidos will report on quarterly earnings in a conference call at 8 a.m. Eastern Time.  03: The Environmental Management Site Advisory Board chairs will hold a virtual two-day meeting starting at 10 a.m. Central Time at […]

A decommissioning company intervening in state-level proceedings necessary for EnergySolutions’ purchase of a Wisconsin nuclear power plant wants to drag out the process with last-minute contentions, EnergySolutions argued Monday. NorthStar’s April request to include Kewaunee Power Station’s annual decommissioning funding status report in the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s (WPSC) review of the plant’s sale to […]

In a just-unsealed public version of a decision last month, a Federal Claims Court judge agrees Swift & Staley is too big to qualify for a new Department of Energy Infrastructure Support Services contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky because of its “negative control” of a joint venture doing similar work at the time […]

The Pentagon and the National Nuclear Security Administration are still “sorting out” exactly how many nuclear-weapon triggers the military needs and by when, the head of the civilian agency said in congressional testimony Wednesday. Law requires the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency to make 80 pits a year by 2030 — a goal the […]

Should the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state decide to grout much of its supplemental low-activity waste at an existing off-site facility, the process could start as early as 2027, a Savannah River National Laboratory official told a National Academies of Sciences panel Tuesday in Richland, Wash. Dan McCabe, senior scientist from the […]

Without fuel to keep it going, it will be difficult to keep the Palisades Power Plant open this summer as Michigan governor’s appeals to the federal government for a bailout, plant operator Entergy’s CEO said Wednesday. “The plant will have to stop operating in May, because we’ll be out of fuel,” Entergy CEO Leo Denault […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s fiscal year 2023 budget request includes everything permitted by the Joe Biden administration’s as-yet unpublished nuclear posture review, the Secretary of Energy said Wednesday in written testimony prepared for her first scheduled congressional budget hearing of the season. The nuclear-weapons steward’s 2023 request of $21.4 billion is around 3.5% higher […]

U.S. electricity generation from nuclear power plants fell behind output from renewable energy sources last year, the government’s independent energy auditor said Tuesday. Renewable energy sources, which include wind, hydropower, solar, biomass, and geothermal power, generated around 800 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity in 2021, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report published […]

A facility the National Nuclear Security Administration is building to remove plutonium from the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., could arrive a little later and cost a little more than thought only a year ago, the agency wrote in its fiscal year 2023 budget request. Unspecified design changes recommended by site prime Savannah River […]