Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The White House on Tuesday officially nominated Marvin Adams to succeed Charles Verdon as the top weapons official at National Nuclear Security Administration headquarters in Washington, according to an evening press release. The White House sent Adams’ nomination to the Senate nearly a month after announcing its intention to make him the next deputy administrator […]

With the New Mexico Environment Department suing the Department of Energy over a 2016 consent order on legacy waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the head of an advocacy group last week questioned why the state is negotiating with the feds over remediation milestones. The New Mexico Environment Department has filed suit against […]

For now, top management at the Department of Energy still plans a phased return to onsite work for employees and contractors starting on Tuesday, Jan. 18. “Per DOE’s COVID-19 Workplace Safety and Reentry Framework, employees who are designated site critical will return to the worksite on Jan. 18,” a DOE headquarters spokesperson said in a […]

Holtec International has agreed to pay a six-figure fine for unspecified security violations at a nuclear power plant the company is decommissioning in New Jersey, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday. Holtec told NRC Jan. 7 that it intends to pay the $150,000 fine proposed in December for security violations at Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating […]

With only a single plant closure expected in 2022, the total generating loss in the U.S. attributable to nuclear energy should be relatively small this year, the Energy Information Administration forecast this week. The planned spring shutdown of Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station should represent around 5% of the country’s total power plant retirements in […]

In the latest rallying cry for an issue now back-burnered for a decade, the federal government’s independent technical experts on nuclear waste called on the Department of Energy to help forge a “long-term political commitment” to site a nuclear waste repository. “Successful repository implementation needs a legal framework that clearly describes the roles of the […]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Department of Justice’s challenges to a Washington state law that made it easier for cleanup workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to claim compensation for certain occupational illnesses. The highest court in the land, an independent branch of the federal government, said Monday […]

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is the new top Republican on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first drafts of policies touching on defense nuclear programs at the Department of Energy, the panel’s GOP leadership said Monday. Lamborn slid into the leadership role after Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the former strategic forces […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site, offline since late October for a combination of an operational outage and technical safety concerns, could get back up by the end of this month, a Department of Energy spokesperson said Monday. In late November, the facility near Aiken, S.C., was already in an outage […]

Sam Brinton will join the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office as the agency’s second-in-command of nuclear waste issues, the nuclear-waste policy expert and current global political director for Deep Isolation announced Monday. Brinton, who currently serves as global political affairs director at aspirant nuclear-waste services company Deep Isolation, will become the Office of Nuclear […]

Three of the four major National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear-weapon sites still have active COVID-19 vaccine mandates in spite of a federal judge’s December order that barred enforcement of the government’s federal contractor mandate. The prime contractors for these sites mostly have not said why they chose to keep the mandates in place, though one […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., signed contracts with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to support the company’s initiative to domestically manufacture a medical isotope without highly enriched uranium, according to a DOE press release. The release did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, or the […]

Eventual winners of new multibillion-dollar contracts at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky are expected to use small businesses to perform work worth 15% to 20% of contract value, not counting the 120-day transition period. That is according to a detailed presentation on the $ 5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning […]

Attempts by New Mexico’s attorney general to pit a federal nuclear waste law against a proposed commercial interim storage facility for spent fuel in Texas don’t pass legal muster, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told an appeals court Friday. State Attorney General Hector Balderas’s December argument that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) is “inextricably linked” […]

An ongoing federal study into alternative liquid-waste cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state should focus narrowly on finding the fastest way to get rid of low-level radioactive waste that can’t be solidified by the site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, a national academies panel recommended last week. The waste treatment plant, which is […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned to meet in January to discuss increasing production of tritium for nuclear weapons in civilian reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to a notice posted online Tuesday. “The purpose of this informational meeting between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is to […]

The Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department were to hold an online public meeting Thursday evening to discuss cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under a 2016 consent agreement between the state and the feds that the state’s governor has lately criticized.  The meeting, run by the DOE Office of Environmental […]

New Jersey’s economic development commission can’t stop Holtec International from receiving an annual tax incentive payout, a state court ruled recently. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) must grant Holtec a $26 million payment from 2018 that is one part of a roughly $260 million state tax incentive the Camden, N.J.-based nuclear services company […]

Interested stakeholders should get a chance this month to chat with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about a recent staff report analyzing the agency’s ability to regulate large-scale transportation of spent nuclear fuel in the U.S., commission documents show. NRC staff plans to hold public meetings “beginning in January 2022” to discuss the results of its […]

James McConnell is the new No. 3 and top career civil servant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency said before New Year’s. McConnell was appointed associate principal deputy administrator in December, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website. In that role he would backstop the agency’s […]

After nearly 30 years in Congress, Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) won’t seek another term in the House, he told local media Monday. Rep. Rush, who was elected to serve Illinois’s 1st congressional district in 1992, won’t run for reelection in the 2022 midterms, he told the Chicago Sun-Times in an interview published Monday. Rush, […]

With litigation on a controversial contract award two years ago still ongoing, the Department of Energy has extended incumbent Swift & Staley as the landlord services provider at the Paducah Site in Kentucky through February, a spokesperson confirmed via email this week. Without the extension, first revealed in a U.S. Court of Federal Claims order, […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management published draft solicitations Tuesday for two contracts potentially worth more than $7.7 billion combined at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The larger draft request for proposals (RFP) is for the potential $5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract, DOE said in a press release. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration hopes its efforts to boost the domestic industry for Molybdenum-99 will result in commercial-scale availability of the medical isotope a couple years from now, according to an annual nonproliferation report the agency released before the holidays. Under its partnership with four U.S. companies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “aims […]

A lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a proposed Texas interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel sputtered back to life in the early days of 2022, recent court filings show. The suit, filed in February by a coalition of anti-nuclear groups including the Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear and the Texas-based minerals company Fasken […]