Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Plutonium pits, tank waste and contractor oversight again topped the Department of Energy inspector general’s list of the agency’s biggest management challenge, according to the latest edition, released before Thanksgiving. The most recent in the rolling series of special reports, “Management Challenges at the Department of Energy,” also assigned the same top priority to DOE’s […]

If a California nuclear power plant is allowed to shut down as scheduled it will “inflict grave harm” on the state’s economy and environment, leaders of a prominent nuclear professional association said in a statement last week. “Years ago, California made a decision to shut down the Diablo Canyon [Power Plant] units. However, circumstances have […]

It could be three to four years before the Department of Energy resumes taking regular shipments of highly radioactive, remote-handled transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., the top local federal manager said recently. During a virtual town hall-style meeting earlier this month for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), Reinhard […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: November 29 – Dec. 03 – Informal negotiations resume in Vienna about the Iran Nuclear Deal, from which the U.S. withdrew in 2017. Robert Malley, the U.S. special representative for Iran, will attend. 29 – Dec. […]

A federal district court judge in South Carolina will hear oral arguments Tuesday in litigation seeking to block the management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site from firing employees starting Nov. 30 for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Judge Michelle Childs issued an order Nov. 22 calling for about […]

In the spirit of the season, groups representing the nuclear industry and nuclear professionals were perfectly courteous and appropriately thankful for the $6 billion in credits provided for struggling nuclear power plants by the bipartisan infrastructure deal signed into law on Nov. 15. Though buried amid a thousand pages of legislative text, details about the […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has now received 13,000 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste at the underground disposal site near Carlsbad, N.M., since it opened in 1999, the agency said Tuesday. The shipment arrived at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Nov. 11 from the Idaho National Laboratory, which has produced more […]

Virginia-based Akima Intra-Data withdrew its protest of the Department of Energy’s September award of a five-year, $135-million Infrastructure Support Services contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio to North Wind Dynamics. Akima dropped the protest Nov. 16, according to a notice on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) website. The company protested the award on Oct. […]

About 100 people are already working at a new Kansas City National Security Campus satellite facility that opened in October just down the road from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main factory for non-nuclear nuclear weapon parts, a spokesperson said Tuesday. For the moment, however, Building 23 — also called Kansas City East — is […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will get a chance early next year to convince a federal judge to drop a lawsuit challenging a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel planned for New Mexico, according to a new court filing. The U.S. District Court for New Mexico will hold a hearing Jan. 20 on NRC’s […]

Texas skipped steps in the well-defined process for lodging disputes with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a recently licensed interim storage site in the Lone Star State and should not be allowed to take its beef over the site to court now, the commission told a judge Tuesday. The NRC presented the argument, for the […]

Profits at Jacobs Engineering, Dallas, fell 3% for the fiscal year ended Oct. 1 as revenue rose by proportionally the same amount, the company said Tuesday morning in its latest earnings release.  Net earnings for the year were about $477 million, or $3.20 a share, down from more than $490 million, or $3.71 a year […]

While he is no longer acting assistant secretary, career fed William (Ike) White remains the top boss at the Department of Energy’s $7-billion-plus Office of Environmental Management as he has been for about two-and-a-half years, an agency spokesperson confirmed Monday. The latest DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) organizational chart dated Wednesday Nov. 17 shows […]

Austrian personnel will be able to access training and information about U.S. and U.K. nuclear naval propulsion under as part of the latest progress in the three-way AUKUS agreement to transfer nuclear submarine technology to Canberra, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Monday. The agreement “will enable Australian civilian and military personnel to receive access […]

As it finishes digging for Manhattan Project-era contamination along a stretch of road by new housing developments, the Los Alamos National Laboratory is also putting finishing touches on a gameplan to deal with similar surprise contamination sites, a new report says. In February 2020, a few years after the lab transferred a 28-acre parcel of […]

A federal court on Friday agreed to review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s call to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a proposed interim storage site in west Texas, according to case filings. Before the weekend, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals carried NRC’s Nov. 3 motion to dismiss Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s suit against the agency […]

Citing safety and security, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission again delayed its review of a safety report required for licensing Holtec’s proposed interim storage site in New Mexico, the agency said Friday. Although NRC planned to have the safety and security report for Holtec International’s proposed interim storage site ready in time for a final licensing […]

For the second year in a row, concern over potential spread of COVID-19 has prompted cancellation of the public deer hunt at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. “Due to COVID-19, the 2021 Deer Hunt has been cancelled,” according to a recent “deer control activities”  notice posted on the Savannah River […]

The Department of Energy said in a Nov. 18 posting there will be a 120-day transition period for the winner of the potential $45-billion Integrated Tank Disposition Contract, at the Hanford Site in Washington state, to take over from the existing contractors. The final Request for Proposals issued last month included some incorrect references to […]

Even if they succeed, the Joe Biden administration’s plans to revamp the way the government selects a spot for the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel will require a change to federal law, the Department of Energy’s inspector general wrote last week. “The [Fiscal year 2021] budget request included funds to begin development of interim […]

A Sandia National Laboratories building that hosts the labs’ power sources technology programs has mostly reopened after being damaged by a fire last month, though the room where the fire started remained closed as of Wednesday, a spokesperson said. The Oct. 11 fire involved a lithium battery and forced the evacuation of the aging Building […]

Former security guards and others at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site have withdrawn their federal lawsuit against current and former DOE contractors at the site, ending for now the plaintiffs’ complaint about serious misconduct such as “racketeering” at the former uranium enrichment plant. Plaintiffs filed a two-page notice of voluntary dismissal with the U.S. […]

Australia is not planning to create a domestic nuclear industry to support the highly enriched uranium-powered submarines the country hopes to build using U.S. and U.K. technology, Canberra’s ambassador said Tuesday. “The subs will be using HEU [highly enriched uranium] and we’re just working out now the arrangements for what that will mean in practice, […]

Two contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio were expected to send home dozens of union employees this week with plans to fire them for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a local United Steelworkers president at the site said in a press release. Potentially, 50 United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-689 members […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — The head of Naval Reactors a invited defense industry executives here Wednesday to think about how they’d contribute to a three-way effort to transfer nuclear submarine propulsion to Australia — but he didn’t invite any contributions. “We have 18 months to go and figure out how to deliver a platform, a capability, […]