Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday allowed a new Exelon spin-off company to take ownership of over a dozen current and former nuclear power plants currently owned by the utility, according to a press release. As part of Exelon’s corporate restructuring, a currently-unnamed holding company will assume control of the utility’s 17 nuclear sites, NRC said […]

Holtec International’s hopes of taking over government payouts for spent fuel storage at a Massachusetts nuclear plant under decommissioning were dashed Monday when a federal judge ruled in favor of the site’s former owner, according to a new court filing. Although Holtec currently owns Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the plant’s former owner Boston Edison is […]

New York-based NorthStar can continue participating in a public review of the Kewaunee Power Station’s sale to EnergySolutions, and the review  need not be restricted to the acquirer’s finances, according to a transcript released Tuesday. During a Nov. 3 prehearing conference held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (WPSC), Administrative Law Judge Michael Newmark ruled […]

Fluor Idaho, which is winding down its $2.3-billion cleanup contract at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, paused a test run of the long-anticipated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit due to visible emissions coming from a stack during heat-up, a manager with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said via email Tuesday. As Fluor “started […]

A group called Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, has protested the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee awarded last month to an Amentum-Jacobs partnership. That’s according to a contract challenge dated Monday and posted to the Government Accountability Office’s website.  Debriefs were held last week on two major contracts […]

Fighting to keep its lawsuit over a proposed interim storage site alive, Texas’ attorney general said Tuesday that the Lonestar State deserves its day in federal court because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has effectively licensed a permanent nuclear repository in the state. Texas Attorney General Bill Paxton “will argue that by licensing a de facto […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is almost finished with a proof-of-concept unit that will kick off mass production of the homogenized version of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, an agency spokesperson said Monday. “The B61-12 program is nearing the completion of the FPU [first production unit] milestone, and we expect to make an announcement later […]

As expected, the Washington state attorney general has filed formal arguments saying there is no need for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit an appeals court ruling that backed a state law boosting workers’ compensation eligibility for Hanford Site employees with certain work-related illnesses. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed his 45-page “brief in opposition” […]

A three-judge panel at the New Mexico Court of Appeals has upheld a state environmental agency’s approval of the Department of Energy’s revised method for calculating underground waste volumes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The new counting method, approved as part of a state permit modification by the New Mexico Environment Department in December […]

The Department of Energy has until March or so to hammer out the details of a tax credits program for financially-troubled nuclear power plants after President Joe Biden signed a long-awaited infrastructure package into law Monday. The bipartisan bill, which opens up around $6 billion in federal funding over a five-year period to provide tax […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said COVID-19 infection rates are falling around the complex near the Georgia line. “The good news is for the first time in some time we have no one in the hospital,” Michael Budney, manager of the DOE Office of Environmental […]

With the Senate set to debate its version of the National Defense Authorization Act this week in Washington — the measure would authorize $20 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration compared with $19.7 billion requested — here’s a look at some of the defense-nuclear amendments proposed for the bill. One the Senate passes its […]

As Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff trickle back into the office, the agency said Monday that its current hybrid workplace model doesn’t yet have an expiration date. “We now are in a posture where most employees are teleworking about three days a week, and they’re in the office on varying days two days a week,” a […]