Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: April  19-20: The National Academies Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board kicks off two days of online meetings starting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time each day. 20: Two committees of the Northern New Mexico Environmental Management Advisory Board hold […]

A container of transuranic waste from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was put underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in March without a required flammable gas analysis, a federal safety group said. The mistake, discovered by the Central Characterization Program for DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime, […]

An energy executive with experience in the gas distribution industry is set to become Entergy’s newest government affairs chief, the company announced this week. Entergy, New Orleans, named John Hudson as its newest senior vice president of federal policy, regulatory and government affairs, according to a press release dated Wednesday. Hudson, who will start in […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear waste management system saw a proposed funding increase for 2023, due in part to its absorption of the agency’s interim storage activities, according to the agency’s latest public budget document. For the Office of Nuclear Energy’s (NE) Integrated Waste Management System, DOE requested roughly $53 million for the upcoming fiscal […]

BWX Technologies Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., will begin producing purified uranium metal for nuclear weapons under a sole-source award announced Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration. “The purification and conversion capabilities provided by the Contractor shall allow for HEU [highly enriched uranium] materials of various forms (such as metal and oxide) to be […]

Centerra, which already provides security at multiple Department of Energy sites, recently won a five-year, $195-million award for protective services at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and nearby offices in Germantown, Md. Centerra’s parent company, Herndon, Va.,-based Constellis, announced the award in a March 31 press release. Centerra will provide protective forces including K-9 […]

The W93 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, the first in decades that is not a refurbishment of a weapon already sailing the seas, will be in line for a big budget increase if Congress goes along with the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal year 2023 budget request. W93, led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, would see […]

Fewer than five days remain before the Department of Energy is expected to publish instructions for financially-troubled nuclear power plant operators looking to bid on a multi-billion-dollar federal assistance package. DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy “anticipates opening a combined certification and sealed bid auction process” on its civil nuclear credits program April 18 by first […]

The state of Massachusetts should ensure that Holtec International is being up front about its plans to discharge irradiated wastewater from a nuclear power plant into nearby waters, the sponsor of a proposed bill to block such an action told Bay State legislators Tuesday. Massachusetts has “a responsibility to insist and expect full transparency and […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 18 shipments of transuranic waste during March, according to the latest available data. During the past month, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) took in 13 shipments from Idaho National Laboratory, four from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and one […]

After the government won a key legal battle last week, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should allow it to begin enforcing a presidential executive order that federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. On April 7 the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit overturned a nationwide preliminary injunction issued […]

Treatment of the Hanford Site’s liquid radioactive waste will produce toxic vapors from a substance called acetonitrile, the Department of Energy said last year in an internal report, a compound that would be unsafe for workers and, according to an environmental group, potentially threatening to people and animals living near the site. The week of […]

A lawsuit against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory over a COVID-19 vaccination mandate is on hold pending settlement talks, a federal judge in Tennessee said Monday. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. stayed all further proceedings in the case, brought by a half-dozen vaccine holdouts against contractor UT-Battelle, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s existing framework for applying principles of environmental justice to its oversight activities needs to more clearly state what such a process would look like at the agency, a staff review team informed the commission late last month. “[T]here is not a common understanding both internally and externally of how [environmental justice] […]

An internal panel of National Nuclear Security Administration personnel have started their headquarters-led review of the agency’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Office and expects to wrap up the work sometime in 2022, an agency spokesperson said Monday. “The independent strategic review of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation’s (DNN) mission space is beginning its work and conversations with DNN […]

U.S. nuclear electricity generation will continue its downward trend as more power plants close down in the coming years, the federal government’s independent energy auditor said in a recent report. Generation losses from reactor retirements contributed to a net U.S. nuclear electricity output of 778 million megawatt-hours (MWh) in 2021, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state had to cope with an unexpected springtime snowfall in their daily commute on Monday. The DOE’s Hanford Site said via Twitter Monday that the 2.3 inches recorded by  Leidos-led services contractor Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) represents a new record for an April snow […]

Marvin Adams on Monday officially became the deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, sworn in by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm over video conference five days after the Senate unanimously confirmed him for the job. The semiautonomous DOE nuclear-weapons agency announced the swearing-in in a press release. This marks Adams’ […]

A member of a three-judge panel for the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said during Friday oral arguments, the Joe Biden administration’s authority to order COVID-19 vaccinations for federal contract workers could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. “You may win the case, the Supreme Court may go with the government down […]

The Department of Energy has yet to carry out needed fixes to allow the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit to resume its final test run at the Idaho National Laboratory, the agency confirmed Monday. A 50-day demonstration run of the long-anticipated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was suspended Feb. 26 after swings in operating temperatures and […]

A turkey flew into an overhead powerline and tripped a circuit breaker at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., last month, blacking out buildings on the west side of the site and very briefly affected critical safety systems in facilities that produce key nuclear-weapon components, federal officials said this week. “The outage […]

Candice Robertson, a familiar face at the Department of Energy, officially started in her new role as acting second-in-command at the agency’s $7.6-billion Office of Environmental Management, according to the latest organizational chart posted Monday.   Robertson is the acting principal deputy assistant secretary, or EM-2, at the DOE nuclear cleanup office, filling the opening created […]

Holtec International has moved into storage some highly-radioactive reactor components at a Massachusetts nuclear power plant under decommissioning, the company announced recently. Holtec finished moving Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) waste, which includes non-fuel waste products such as “highly activated metal components,” onto the site’s independent spent fuel storage installation in early March, the […]

Continuing the U.S. campaign to inshore production of Molybdenum-99, the Secretary of Energy this week announced she cleared the way to provide upstart domestic manufacturers of the medical isotope with up to 750 kilograms of high assay, low enriched uranium annually. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set up the annual transfer to industry on April […]

Plaintiffs suing the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over COVID-19 vaccination requirements for employees are interested in settling the case, according to a filing last week in federal court. “Plaintiffs believe that this case is well-situated for settlement discussions,” according to an April 5 status report filed […]

Changes in the scope of work for two new Department of Energy contracts planned at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and Paducah Site in Kentucky, should not cause job cuts or employee transfers between the two former gaseous diffusion plants, the agency said Thursday in a procurement notice. As DOE has said previously, some work […]