Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: 26: The National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board kicks off a three-day meeting starting at 7:30 a.m. Pacific Time at the Holiday Inn Richland, Wash., regarding continued analysis of supplemental treatment of low-activity waste at the Hanford […]

The procurement arm of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office is requesting information from contractors capable of storing and disposing of low-level or mixed low-level hazardous waste, according to a recent online notice. The DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center issued a sources sought/request for information (RFI) on Thursday April 21, trying to […]

Prospective bidders on a Department of Energy contract for long-term storage of domestic elemental mercury now have two extra weeks, until May 20, to submit proposals. In an update on its procurement page for Elemental Mercury Long-term Management and Storage, the DOE said Thursday April 21 that the submission deadline is being extended to May […]

The Department of Energy requested $10 million to fund local and tribal participation in the agency’s quest to site and eventually build a federally operated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, according to a detailed fiscal year 2023 budget request released late last week. For the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, DOE says […]

Until the recent past, the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico let its fire trucks fall into disrepair and did a poor job of training firefighters, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a just-released report.   While it found no evidence to substantiate the most serious allegations raised about the […]

The company selected to manage Diablo Canyon Power Station’s spent fuel inventory fired back Wednesday at claims from a competitor that its cask system was unsafe and untested. Orano USA, whose subsidiary TN Americas on April 6 locked down the spent fuel contract with plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), was “surprised” at what […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is looking for a new remote office site in Las Vegas for personnel who don’t need to regularly commute to the Nevada Nuclear Security Site some 60 miles to the northwest of the city, according to a recent procurement note. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency “plans to […]

New Mexico’s governor blasted the Secretary of Energy this month for failing to provide “meaningful and transparent public engagement” about the agency’s plans to ship immobilized, surplus plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant from South Carolina. “Because the issues raised in the petition can only be addressed by DOE, I am passing this petition […]

William (Ike) White, the top manager of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, expects excess contaminated facilities in the weapons complex to draw more attention in the next decade or so, he told a National Academies of Sciences board Wednesday. Within that span, it will be time for the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management […]

Operators of financially struggling nuclear power plants now have around a month to bid for some of the cash available under the Department of Energy’s civil nuclear credits program, the agency announced Tuesday. Bids on the first round of DOE’s roughly $6 billion nuclear credits program, greenlit in November’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, are […]

Department of Energy managers, college officials and lawmakers broke ground Tuesday on a new off-site research center for the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. The $50-million Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative facility, to be built by North Wind Group on the University of South Carolina-Aiken campus, will provide 60,000 square feet of laboratory, office and […]

The Jacobs-led cleanup contractor the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory has lifted a self-imposed “stand down” order at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The contractor, Idaho Environmental Coalition, lifted the order March 31, the DOE spokesperson said in a Tuesday email. The spokesperson was responding to a Weapons […]

Some 260 Palisades Nuclear Generating Station employees, accounting for more than 40% of the current workforce, will stay on the job even after a decommissioning company takes over, the plant’s owner said. These employees will remain on site “as part of the first phase of decommissioning,” a spokesperson for plant owner Entergy told Exchange Monitor […]

Two of North America’s largest utilities are teaming up to advance the rollout of new advanced nuclear technology in the U.S. and Canada, the companies announced Tuesday. Under their new partnership, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) plan to coordinate design, licensing and deployment of advanced reactors “as part of the […]

With an eye toward exposing national security blindspots in nations considering nuclear power, the National Nuclear Security Administration is talking to people in Turkey, Africa and southeast Asia, an agency official told a National Academies panel Tuesday. “There are some countries in Africa, Turkey is one of the countries that’s currently looking at developing a […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February invasion of Ukraine led to the takeover of both active nuclear power plants and the shuttered Chernobyl plant, adding an unsettling radiological dimension to the war, the head of a Ukrainian research laboratory said Tuesday in a virtual presentation to a National Academies of Science panel. While Russian troops have […]

The Supreme Court should uphold the constitutionality of a 2018 Washington state law that makes it easier for workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site to qualify for compensation for illnesses believed to be linked to contamination at the former plutonium production complex, the state attorney general’s office argued Monday. Washington Deputy Solicitor General […]

A federal district judge in southern Ohio is allowing most claims brought by a group of local residents to proceed against current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site. With the exception of not allowing minor children to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit chiefly concerning property, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley rejected […]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is hitting the road early next month and heading to Massachusetts where they’ll discuss nuclear plant decommissioning policies in the shadow of one such project, according to a press release from a subcommittee chair. The Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee’s clean air, climate and nuclear safety subcommittee […]

The U.S. Air Force in fiscal 2023 is requesting almost $981 million for the Long Range Standoff Missile that Raytheon is developing for the service — nearly $382 million more than appropriated by Congress in fiscal 2022 and more than $615 million more than the fiscal 2021 budget. Of the $980.8 million the Air Force […]

The Department of Energy intends to keep Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions as management and operations contractor of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for up to five more years, the agency said in a procurement notice Monday. The agency said on the SAM.gov procurement website it plans to extend the period of performance […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday continued to poke holes in the state of Texas’s lawsuit over an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel proposed for Andrews County, arguing that the Lone Star State had no right to sue — and even if it did, that its case was badly flawed. Texas hasn’t shown […]

The Navy is killing its nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile program because it would cost too much money to build the weapon, which the service says cannot be built in time anyway. “The program was cost prohibitive and the acquisition schedule would have delivered capability late to need,” the Navy wrote recently in a 181-page highlight […]

The prototype of a mobile nuclear reactor under development at the Department of Defense will be powered by advanced fuel sourced from within the U.S., the project lead said last week. The Project Pele micro-reactor prototype “will use fully unencumbered nuclear fuel,” program manager Jeff Waksman told Exchange Monitor in an emailed statement Friday. The […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration aims to continue shoring up its workforce by adding the equivalent of 38 full-time employees in fiscal year 2023, according to newly released details of its 2023 budget request. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency seeks about $496 million, a roughly a 7% year-over-year increase, for its federal salaries […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management officially said in a Thursday press release it is expanding its Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program thanks to increased funding for the program in the agency’s fiscal 2022 budget, which started Oct. 1. In March, DOE’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina said Minority Serving Institutions […]