Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

There was “no impact” to Department of Environmental Management sites in Kentucky and Tennessee after a rash of unusual late-autumn tornados wrought death and destruction across the middle of the country over the weekend. “Thankfully, no impact to our EM sites,” a spokesperson for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) wrote Monday […]

With a federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate suspended at the site, employees put on unpaid leave because they would not take the vaccine were scheduled to return to work Monday at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a lab spokesperson told the Exchange Monitor. “To comply with the federal court order and the state’s suspension of its […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday should give decommissioning company Holtec International the go-ahead to buy two Michigan nuclear power plants, according to a recent notice from the agency. In a Dec. 3 letter to the commissioners, the agency said NRC staff should issue an order Monday approving the sale of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station […]

Ignoring the ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee’s plea for probation, a federal judge in New Mexico sentenced Joshua Cordova to nearly two years in prison for the four counts of fraud to which he admitted earlier this year. Cordova worked at the Albuquerque-based labs network from 2011 to 2019, instructing military and law enforcement personnel how […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—During a Thursday address to the National Cleanup Workshop here, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) touched upon everything from Congress averting a government shutdown to the need for a new disposal site for nuclear debris at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. “We are either going to pass a budget or get a year-long CR […]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an environmental watchdogs’ bid to stop the storage of spent nuclear fuel at a California nuclear power plant under decommissioning. The highest court in the land, an independent branch of the federal government, denied San Diego-based Public Watchdogs’ petition for review of a Ninth Circuit Court […]

ALEXIANDRIA, VA — The Department of Energy expects a new ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to come online between 2024 and 2026, the manager of the agency’s Carlsbad field office said here Wednesday. The agency’s Office of Environmental Management expects its rebaselining of the cost and schedule for the […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — The demolition of the massive X-326 Process Building, which began in the spring, is underway and should be finished in summer 2022, an executive with the decommissioning contractor at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio said at a conference here Wednesday. “We are off to a very good start of […]

A federal judge in Georgia blocked the Joe Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for contractors on Tuesday, almost exactly three months after Biden issued an executive order requiring shots for workers doing the government’s business. Most prime contractors at Department of Energy defense-nuclear sites had had their contracts modified to include a vaccine mandate well […]

The state of New Mexico will need to file its first supporting arguments early next year in its legal challenge to a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Texas, according to new court filings. State attorney general Hector Balderas has until Jan. 18 to file the next brief in his lawsuit against […]

The state of Texas wants more time to develop its legal argument against a proposed interim storage facility within its borders, according to a new court filing. Texas would have until Feb. 7 of next year, nearly five months from the day it sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Department of Energy officials kicked off the National Cleanup Workshop here Wednesday by praising the Office of Environmental Management and its contract workers for continuing remediation of nuclear site remediation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, in a pre-recorded message, thanked Environmental Management (EM) workers for “going into the […]

The senior vice president of Pacific Gas & Electric’s generation business, also the head of its nuclear energy segment, will retire at the end of the year, the company said Monday. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Senior Vice President of Generation and chief nuclear officer Jim Welsch planned to retire effective Dec. 31, according to […]

Although federal attempts to site an interim storage facility for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel have yet to succeed, the Department of Energy’s current nuclear power chief thinks that things will shake out differently this time. “[T]here is something very different now than there has been in the past,” Kathryn Huff, DOE’s assistant secretary for […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board announced Monday it has appointed Eric Richardson as a resident inspector at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In this role, Richardson will advise the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) on the safety conditions of facilities at federal complex near the Georgia state line, […]

A compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, passed Tuesday by the House and awaiting a vote in the Senate, would authorize funding for Department of Energy nuclear waste and weapons programs at or above the requested level for fiscal year 2022. In the bill, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management would get the requested […]

With virtually all federal employees mandated to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board envisions a staff return-to-workplace date of Jan. 24, a spokesperson for the board said Tuesday morning. “[P]lans may change, but this is our current plan,” Tara Tadlock, the associate director for board operations at the Defense Nuclear Facilities […]

For the second time in two months, the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site has dealt with a truck fire, according to a recently-published staff report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. A truck that workers used to move soil into a radiological buffer area in the West section of Hanford caught fire “and was […]

The Department of Energy’s recently-rebooted search for a federal interim storage site to store spent nuclear fuel is one step in the right direction, one of Congress’s foremost advocates for nuclear-waste management said in an op-ed Sunday. DOE’s Nov. 30 Request for Information (RFI) about using a consent-based process to site a federal interim facility […]

A federal district judge in Eastern Washington has rejected claims filed against President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and various federal agencies connected with a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for federal contractors in a lawsuit filed by an individual representing himself. “The Court finds that Plaintiff’s claims against Federal Defendants are properly dismissed for either a […]

Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, the same venture that last month challenged the Department of Energy’s issuance of the new Cleanup Contract, potentially worth $8.3 billion, at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, protested the contract again. A notice dated Friday on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) website showed another protest of the contract issued to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to approve the sale of two Michigan nuclear power plants to a decommissioning company by Dec. 13, the agency said in a letter last week. NRC will issue “an order approving the transfer of licenses” of both Palisades Nuclear Generating Station and Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant to Holtec […]

The National Nuclear Safety Administration announced Monday Corey Hinderstein was sworn in as deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration.      The Senate unanimously confirmed Hinderstein Nov. 30. The swearing in was announced by National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) administrator Jill Hruby in a press release. “I would also like to […]

Community members and other stakeholders gathered at a rally on the West Coast this weekend to show their support for California’s last nuclear power plant, slated to close in the coming years. Flying a small blimp with the phrase ‘save clean energy’ emblazoned on the side, demonstrators marched through San Luis Obispo, Calif., on Saturday […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: Dec. 06-10 – The House, then the Senate, were scheduled to vote on a compromise National Defense Authorization Act, media reported. The compromise bill would replace a version of the annual military policy bill that the Senate  last […]