Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

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, […]