Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Non-executive board chair John Fees will end a 43-year career with BWX Technologies and its predecessor companies on May 3, the Lynchburg, Va.-based naval nuclear reactor provider, fuel fabricator and defense-nuclear site-manager announced Wednesday in a regulatory filing. Fees, who has been the non-executive chairman since 2018, will retire after the company’s board of directors […]

After ordering a temporary halt to a few COVID-19 vaccine-related firings at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory last week, a federal judge was scheduled to hear arguments next week about whether to extend the firing moratorium, according to court papers. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley in the Eastern District of Tennessee issued a temporary restraining […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ prime contractor for decommissioning of the SM-1 reactor at Fort Belvoir Army base in Fairfax County, Va., is APTIM AECOM Decommissioning LLC (A2D), a joint venture of Aptim and Amentum. “Decom Work at Ft. Belvoir Reactor to Begin in November” [Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, Oct. 19, 2021].

Four Republicans in the House of Representatives want Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to examine potential “unintended impacts” of staff losses at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where some employees plan to leave the site rather than get a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. The lawmakers’ question if DOE has thought through […]

An environmental watchdog group wants Pennsylvania’s environmental protection office to pressure an interstate regulator to step in on water use at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, according to a request the group sent this week. Three Mile Island Alert asked the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Wednesday to petition the Susquehanna River Basin […]

The Secretary of State used a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to talk tough on Iran this week, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee approved a couple of nuclear-nonproliferation nominees at State. Secretary Anthony Blinken’s Monday meeting with Rafael Grossi, director general of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), happened […]

There “has been some uncertainty” in developing guidelines for Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff to request religious or medical exemptions from the Joe Biden administration’s federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate, an NRC official said at a virtual all-hands meeting Tuesday morning.  “I think we’re very close on the guidelines for the medical exemption,”  the agency’s newly appointed […]

Sister Megan Rice, a peace activist whose 2012 break-in to the Y-12 National Security Complex spurred an overhaul of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s physical security apparatus, died Oct. 10 at 91, her order said.  Rise was born in 1930 and joined the Society of Holy Child Jesus in 1947. After breaking into Y-12 at […]

A three-way partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines “is not designed in any way to be exclusive,” the U.K. military’s highest-ranking uniformed officer said Tuesday.  The trilateral deal, called AUKUS, was “a first step in terms of industrial development between like-minded partners,” Gen. Sir […]

Mark Gilbertson, one of the top supervisors at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, is calling it a career at the end of the month, the agency said Tuesday. Gilbertson, currently associate principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and policy affairs, is retiring after 25 years at the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) […]

The former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now part of a utility company’s board of directors, according to a press release Monday. Kristine Svinicki, who was the top regulator at NRC from 2017 to January, was elected to Southern Company’s board effective Sunday, the company said in a press release dated Monday. Svinicki […]

The Savannah River Site’s management contractor requires employees seeking a medical exemption from a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination to submit a certified form from their doctor, while those seeking a religious waiver might have to be interviewed and file supporting documents from a minister. That is according to Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) documents distributed to […]

After various problems hamstrung the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for most of August and September, the disposal facility only took in three shipments of transuranic waste last month, all of which arrived Sept. 30. A combination of problematic underground conditions and a brief uptick in COVID-19 cases prompted DOE […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is “targeting” fiscal year 2026 as the startup date for a new facility at the Savannah River Site that will process 34 metric tons of surplus weapon usable plutonium for disposal in New Mexico, an agency official told advisors to South Carolina’s governor on Monday. That’s two years earlier than […]

The Department of Energy now expects the Salt Waste Processing Facility built by Parsons at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will treat roughly four million gallons, rather than six million gallons,  during its first full year of operation, an agency official told the state Nuclear Advisory Council Monday. Parsons finished hot commissioning of […]

Early steps in the decommissioning of the long dormant SM-1 reactor at the Ft. Belvoir Army base in Virginia will begin in November, the Army Corps of Engineers announced recently. The Corps of Engineers plans to “mobilize limited site crew” in early November to start prepping SM-1 reactor in Fairfax County for dismantlement, according to […]

A federal nuclear waste agency will take a look at some the Department of Energy’s recent research into long-term geologic storage of radioactive waste in November, according to a press release Monday. During two days of public meetings starting Nov. 3, representatives from DOE’s national labs will present to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board […]

SHINE Technologies, Janesville, Wis., got $35 million through a cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to help produce the molybdenum-99 medical isotope in the U.S. without relying on highly enriched uranium, the agency announced Monday. This was the third of four agreements planned under a funding opportunity Congress ordered the National Nuclear Security […]

Despite the dismissal of some workers who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the Department of Energy and its contractors at the Savannah River Site do not currently expect big personnel shortages in fiscal 2022, federal officials told the Nuclear Advisory Council to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday. Of the total 1,056-member workforce […]

A New Mexico state judge declined to block the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s management and operations contractor for enforcing its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and other measures to reduce COVID-19 transmission on site, local media reported Friday. More than 100 Los Alamos employees had sued the lab’s operations contractor, Triad National Security, in the First Judicial […]

The company in charge of a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Texas is getting involved in the state’s federal suit against the proposed site, according to recent court filings. A judge in the U.S. fifth circuit court of appeals allowed Interim Storage Partners (ISP) to intervene in Texas attorney general Ken […]

The Department of Energy will solicit more public input this fall on plans for a new low-level waste landfill, the Environmental Management Disposal Facility project, at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, before issuing an updated draft of its record of decision in December, according to an agency spokesperson. The DOE Office of Environmental Management […]

“In the Dark of the Valley,” a documentary about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, is scheduled to air nationwide on the MSNBC cable network on Nov. 14 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, the Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and other groups announced recently. The documentary film explores a 1959 nuclear accident involving a commercially-owned sodium […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: October 18 – Meeting: South Carolina House of Representatives SRS and ARPA Appropriations Ad Hoc Committee. 11 a.m. Eastern time. South Carolina Statehouse Blatt Building, Room 110. Testimony of the Office of Regulatory Staff. Streaming online.  […]

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission team conducting an environmental justice review of agency practices will give members of the public an update on their progress next week, the agency announced recently. The review team, spearheaded by Gregory Suber, the head of the agency’s operating reactor licensing division, will host its second virtual public comment session Oct. […]

Personnel at the Savannah River Site should wrap up commissioning of transuranic waste characterization equipment by March, in time to get a shipment of proliferation-resistant plutonium-oxide mixture shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant next summer, a site spokesperson said Wednesday. Testing and certification of the transuranic waste-characterization equipment at the site’s recently completed K-Area […]