Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The state of New Mexico is expanding its legal campaign against spent fuel storage with a new lawsuit challenging a proposed interim storage facility in Texas, according to a press release Monday. State attorney general Hector Balderas and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) asked a judge in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was to meet this week to give the interested public an update on its plans for fully resuming antiterrorism drills at nuclear power plants, according to a meeting notice. During the meeting, to be held virtually Thursday, NRC’s security and incident response office will discuss how the agency will conduct its […]

Members of the Hanford Atomic Metals Trade Council at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state have ratified labor agreement extensions for much of the unionized workforces of four of the largest federal contractors at the nuclear cleanup site, according to a recent Facebook post by the council. “All four of the contractor’s […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico received 17 shipments of transuranic waste during October, according to figures posted on its public website. That means the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has now received 166 shipments of the defense-related waste so far this calendar year, a figure nearly identical to […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: November 14-19: SC21, supercomputing conference. America’s Center. St. Louis. In-person and virtual sessions. Agenda here. 15: Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board starts two-day meeting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time at the Holiday Inn-Beach House in Hilton […]

The Small Business Administration again ruled that incumbent Swift and Staley is too large to be the next landlord services provider at the Department of Energy’s Paducah site, kicking the matter back to a federal court and keeping the company on site at least through February 2022.  That’s according to a Friday filing in the […]

Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., on Wednesday posted net income of about $41.5 million, or $2.95 a share for the 2021 third quarter, up from a loss of $7 million or 83 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Quarterly revenue was about $91 million, up from more than $57.5 million a year ago, mostly […]

More than 90% of the workers for both the Department of Energy environmental management field office and the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, are now vaccinated against COVID-19, a federal official told a DOE advisory committee Wednesday. In addition, cleanup of radioactive contamination on a stretch of a […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is wrapping up its end of the decommissioning process at a former California nuclear power plant and deemed several locations at the site safe for unrestricted use, according to a recent letter from the agency. NRC approved three of Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) final status survey reports (FSSRs) for sections […]

As soon as next week, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should issue a draft solicitation for a Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said recently. The draft request for proposals (RFP) should show up sometime between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17, the agency’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office […]

It will be weeks or maybe even early 2022 before the Department of Energy shares more details about how it will auction off $6 billion worth of credits to struggling nuclear power plants over the next five years, a DOE official said Wednesday. “It’ll really be a little while before we have the details of […]

The Department of Energy does not expect a delay to a crucial cesium-removal demonstration at the Hanford Site’s tank farms, despite the discovery last month that parts of the system might be prone to leaks, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The “leak-tightness” issue, as the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) called it in a […]

Australia will modify an existing submarine design when it acquires nuclear propulsion under the new AUKUS trilateral partnership with the United Kingdom and the U.S., Canberra’s ambassador to the states said in a virtual presentation Tuesday. “We didn’t want to spend years playing around with a design and so with our American and English partners, […]

Editor’s note, 11/10/2021, 1:44 p.m. Eastern time. The story was corrected to show that Los Alamos is scheduled to complete the PF-4 decontamination and demolition subproject in fiscal year 2025.   A major subproject to clear out space for new pit-manufacturing equipment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory will cost about $530 million and finish […]

The Santa Fe-based Southwest Research and Information Center, a frequent critic of the Department of Energy’s operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, has appealed an Oct. 27 ruling by the New Mexico Environment Department authorizing completion of a new underground utility shaft at the transuranic waste disposal facility. Southwest Research Information Center (SRIC) attorney […]

After an Illinois climate bill bailed out two financially-struggling nuclear plants in the state, the utility operating the reactors said last week that their lifespans had been significantly increased. Byron Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 2 reactor will run until 2046 and its Unit 1 reactor is slated to shut down in 2044, Exelon said in […]

In 2020, Dan Brouillette, then-President Donald Trump’s second energy secretary, allegedly violated the Hatch Act — the law that prevents public servants from campaigning for or supporting candidates for office, the special counsel said in a report Tuesday.  Brouillette and 12 other Trump administration officials were implicated in the findings. According to the report, Brouillette […]

As part of a foundation-shaking corporate split announced Tuesday, General Electric said its nuclear services arm will be managed by a future spin-off company focused on the energy sector. General Electric’s (GE) power segment will be subsumed into a new business “positioned to lead the energy transition” in early 2024, the company said in a […]

Before it even started, the Department of Energy on Tuesday cancelled a competition for a Savannah River Site management and operations contract worth billions, citing an increase of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons work at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is indefinitely delaying the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the […]

Under current projections, the Department of Energy could process nearly all of the salt waste inventory from 43 high-level radioactive waste tanks at the Savannah River Site by 2033, the top official for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management there said recently. The 2033 date cited by Michael Budney, manager of the Savannah River Operations […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still hammering the Department of Energy about a nearly decade-old recommendation to stiffen safety requirements at Savannah River Site’s Building 235-F to avoid a plutonium release from the aging structure.  In a Nov. 2 letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Joyce Connery, the board chair, praised DOE […]

Declining to block the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a judge ruled Monday that Los Alamos National Laboratory Employees who will not take a required COVID-19 vaccine and are unsatisfied with receiving unpaid leave as their religious exemption from the shot must hash things out with the lab in arbitration. Pending the outcomes of other lawsuits […]

An inspection at Holtec International’s headquarters found that the company violated some federal regulations in its spent fuel cask program, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a recent letter. In a letter to Holtec president and CEO Krishna Singh, dated Oct. 28 and made public Thursday,  NRC said its investigation team in May discovered three […]