Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The five major nuclear-weapon states on Monday released a new statement about the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the bedrock international accord that promotes the peaceful use of nuclear technology and a philosophy of defensive use of nuclear weapons. “We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.  […]

The new management team is in place at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to the Idaho Environmental Coalition’s website. The change was effective Jan. 1. The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has a potential ten-year, $6.4 billion contract and took  over from Fluor Idaho.  Ty Blackford is the president and program manager at the new team, […]

Before Christmas, a federal judge rejected a request from 292 workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to temporarily block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate at the cleanup complex in Washington state, and lawyers had not filed new paperwork as of New Year’s. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington […]

A handful of employees at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have until Tuesday to respond to their employer’s motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit about the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Just after Christmas, on Dec. 27, U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley allowed the six employees of UT-Battelle, the University of […]

A federal district judge in South Carolina on Tuesday Dec. 28 refused to block the prime contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina from carrying out its vaccine mandate against employees who refuse to take the shot against COVID-19. U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs said because Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear […]

The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico has retained California-based Tetra Tech to work on a supplemental environmental impact statement and related documents for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The agreement for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) documents is potentially worth $1.8-million, according to a Dec. 27 task order award notice […]

A National Nuclear Security Administration helicopter will sweep the Las Vegas strip through Dec. 31 to measure background radiation levels ahead of planned New Year’s Eve celebrations, the agency announced this week. Flights were scheduled to begin Dec. 29 and continue through Dec. 31. The agency’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team regularly takes background radiation measurements […]

There were 71 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among workers for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch as of Dec. 16, down 16 from the prior week, a spokesperson for the office said in a Dec. 28 email. Also on Dec. 16 date, workers at DOE Office of Environmental Management sites had confirmed 7,416 cases […]

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) died Tuesday, according to a statement from his family. Reid, who was Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, died “peacefully” Tuesday afternoon following a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer, his wife Landra Reid said in a statement. He was 82 years old. Reid was best known to nuke-watchers as […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration received the approval, though not the appropriation, to spend some $500 million more than requested for fiscal year 2022, under the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law Monday. Aside from allowing the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons agency to spend more than $20 billion — a sum House and […]

A federal judge will review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s request to block a Texas minerals company’s bid to get involved with a state lawsuit over a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, recent court documents show. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 21 agreed to consider NRC’s motion to dismiss Fasken […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend its existing business agreement by one year with a contractor doing studies to support the federal agency’s remediation at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California, according to a procurement notice published Dec. 16. The DOE Office of Environmental Management published a justification on SAM.gov for extending a […]

A Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management program has identified 360 abandoned uranium mines on tribal lands across the western U.S. and is working with other government agencies to assess the safety and environmental risk posed by the sites, Legacy Management said in a press release this month. About 96% of the sites identified […]

The Department of Energy could solicit bids for long-term management and storage of elemental mercury in January, the Office of Environmental Management said in a procurement update after Christmas. After court action by gold mining companies forced DOE to drop earlier plans to designate Waste Control Specialists in West Texas as its preferred long-term storage […]

A half-dozen employees suing the operator of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate have asked a federal court in Knoxville for two more weeks, until Jan. 4, 2022, to file their amended complaint. The plaintiffs filed their motion for the extension in the U.S. District Court […]

The head of the New Mexico Environment Department, James Kenney, supports a congressional committee’s call for the Government Accountability Office to examine practices at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. Kenney wrote this week to the U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), backing a request this month by […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed fining Holtec International, Camden, N.J., $150,000 for unspecified security violations at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant that the company is decommissioning.  This summer, the NRC disclosed security violations related to spent fuel and falsified records about firearms at the shuttered plant in Lacey Township. “Holtec has 30 days to […]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory paused enforcement of its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a labs spokesperson told the Exchange Monitor Wednesday. “Enforcement of the mandate at LLNL is paused until further notice,” the Livermore spokesperson said. “However, our current COVID-19 safety controls remain in place. We’re currently at 580 total cases, our vaccination rate is approximately 90 […]

A nationwide injunction against contractor vaccine mandates should not apply to the management and operations contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Fluor-led team said in Monday court filing. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is a privately-held employer, the company said in a filing with the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, […]

As of early December, the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., had received 200 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste in 2021, beating the 2020 total of 192 shipments with weeks left to go in the calendar year, according to the mine’s website. In November alone, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) […]

If transferring spent nuclear reactor fuel from wet to dry storage was an Olympic sport, Holtec International would take home the gold — at least according to the company. In a Dec. 13 press release, the Camden, N.J., nuclear services company announced that it had completed spent fuel transfer at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station Dec. […]

The U.S. will cease exporting highly enriched uranium to overseas producers of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 in January, the federal government announced Monday. In the release, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said they jointly certified that there is enough molybdenum-99 (Mo-99)  in the world […]

The Joe Biden administration will nominate Texas A&M nuclear engineering professor Marvin Adams to be deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the White House announced Wednesday.  Adams, if approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee and confirmed by the full Senate, will replace Charlie Verdon, the last senior appointee left […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site said Wednesday cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant is basically finished, while a nuclear boss with the Washington Department of Ecology indicated there is a general agreement about future remediation needs at the former plutonium production hub. Those were a couple of major takeaways […]

Editor’s note: the following was adapted from remarks delivered Wednesday by retired Air Force Gen. Frank Klotz, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from 2014 to 2018, in a virtual forum organized by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center. The Exchange Monitor has abridged Klotz’s […]