Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A coalition of environmental and citizens’ watchdog groups urged the Senate Finance Committee to drop millions of dollars in subsidies for nuclear energy from the budget reconciliation bill containing President Joe Biden’s signature domestic spending programs, according to a letter mailed this week. The roughly $35 billion in nuclear production tax credits proposed in the […]

In an interview Tuesday with the Exchange Monitor, the chair of the The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hit back against another commissioner’s charges that a long-awaited decommissioning rulemaking proved the agency’s regulatory capture. “[O]ne of the things that’s getting out there in the aether is that somehow the agency’s taken on kind of a laissez-faire approach […]

A Lexington, Ky.-based small business, EHI Consultants, on Tuesday was issued a 5-year, $4.5-million contract to continue providing support services for certain advisory boards to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. The firm-fixed contract renewal for EHI to continue providing staff support for the citizen advisory boards at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio […]

A lawsuit over the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s vaccine mandate will go on at least a little longer, now that a federal judge has allowed the plaintiffs until Dec. 22 to file a response to the lab prime contractor’s motion to dismiss the case. UT-Battelle, a team of the University of Tennessee and Battelle, is […]

A federal judge in Eastern Washington will hear oral arguments by telephone Dec. 17 on whether to issue a temporary restraining order that would put the brakes on potential firings by Department of Energy contractors of guards and other employees at the Hanford Site who refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccination. U.S. District Judge Thomas […]

Out of perhaps 950-to-1,000 United Steelworkers members employed by various companies at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio between 10 and 15 are expected to be fired as a result of the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for federal contractors, a union official said Tuesday. It is always possible a couple of those heretofore […]

The Department of Energy cannot build an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel before building a permanent repository, but it can canvass potential host communities for an interim site, the agency’s top nuclear energy official said Tuesday. “Congress provided funding for DOE to move forward with establishing an interim storage program using its existing […]

The Senate on Tuesday unanimously confirmed Corey Hinderstein to be deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Security Administration. A think-tanker with a previous detail to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under her belt, Hinderstein was on the Senate’s executive calendar for 40 days after clearing the Senate Armed Services […]

An ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee who racked up fraudulent charges of thousands of dollars or more on his company credit card is trying to stay out of prison, according to a sentencing memo filed before Thanksgiving. “If sentenced to pay a fine and be placed on probation for a period of five years, Mr. [Joshua] […]

Andrew Richards, chief of staff for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, is leaving the agency after 10 years for a private-sector job, he told colleagues Monday. Richards’ last day was to be Tuesday, he said in an email viewed Tuesday by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. He did not identify his new employer […]

A story in the Nov. 29 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“Oral Arguments Slated in Vaccination Mandate Suit Against SRNS”] should have said the hearing in the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions vaccination mandate case is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 30. 

A vaccine mandate by the Department of Energy’s management contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is tantamount to the contractor practicing medicine without a license, a lawyer for about 95 employees refusing to be inoculated against COVID-19 said in a legal filing Monday in federal court. Last week, on the day before […]

There won’t be any significant environmental or safety issues if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows Holtec International to dip into a Michigan nuclear plant’s decommissioning funds for nuclear waste management, the agency said recently. Granting Holtec an exemption to use Palisades Nuclear Generating Station’s decommissioning trust fund for spent fuel management and site restoration activities […]

The Department of Energy has given the green light to a group led by Virginia-based BWX Technologies to begin a 90-day transition to take over liquid waste management and other work included under the Integrated Mission Completion Contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, an agency spokesperson said Monday morning. The notice was […]

A team led by Fluor Corp., Irving, Texas, won the potentially 10-year, $28-billion contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two big nuclear-weapon production facilities in Tennessee and Texas, multiple sources said Monday. The team beat out at least two other bids — one led by BWX Technologies and another led by Bechtel National […]

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 […]