Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Funeral services were scheduled for Nov. 9 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., for a submarine officer who had a second career in the civilian nuclear world as a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staffer for most of the last decade. Captain John Pasko (Ret.) died Sept. 7, according to a memorial post published […]

A bipartisan group of four senators reintroduced a bill to protect whistleblowers at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from retaliation, according to a recent press release. Before the Senate adjourned last week, Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ron Wyden (D-Wash.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) announced that they filed their […]

Members of the public have a month to comment on the proposed sale of a mothballed Wisconsin nuclear power plant to a decommissioning company, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday. NRC is accepting input on the proposed license transfer of Kewaunee Power Station to an EnergySolutions subsidiary from Dominion Energy until Nov. 12, the agency […]

With a Friday deadline looming, the Fluor-led operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is making plans to fire employees who have refused COVID-19 vaccinations while also issuing a final plea for the holdouts to get inoculated. In a Monday staff email, viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing and […]

Although the buildings have been torn down, there is still plenty of remediation work left for the Department of Energy in coming years at its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a spokesman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said. “The soil cleanup is expected to finish around 2034,” Russ Edmondson, a […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: October 12 – The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant plans a town hall presentation online starting at 5 p.m. Mountain Time on regulatory issues surrounding Panel 8 for underground disposal. 12 –The Department of […]

A government employee and his wife were arrested over the weekend for attempting this summer to sell classified information about the Virginia-class attack submarine’s nuclear reactor to a foreign government, according to an unsealed criminal complaint dated Friday. Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana Toebbe, were in federal custody by Saturday, according to a Monday […]

As of Sept. 30, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has recorded more than 6,900 cases of COVID-19 and dozens of fatalities within the weapons complex since the pandemic began, according to data provided Friday by a spokesperson. The number of deaths is now 41 among federal and contractor employees in the DOE […]

An article in the Oct. 6 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“DOE Completes Startup Testing for Liquid Disposal at Waste Treatment Plant”] should have said that by December, Hanford crews will gradually start heating up the first melter at the Low Activity Waste Facility to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

A lawsuit challenging a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel should see some new action this week, court documents show. Tuesday is the deadline for a coalition of anti-nuclear groups to file new motions in their suit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed spent fuel storage site in […]

While no details were provided, a Department of Energy spokesperson officially confirmed late Friday Centerra will continue at least in the short term as security contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. “Yes, they’ll be extended,” the spokesperson said. The federal agency is not working today in observance of the […]

The article “Over Half of NRC Employees Vaccinated, NRC Says” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, October 05, 2021) should have said that a full return to work at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scheduled for Nov. 7 and that some staff are already working in-person.

The Department of Energy should award a new long-term contract for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by the end of the year, agency officials told an annual conference sponsored by the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association Wednesday. Angela Watmore, the acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management for the […]

Nobody was hurt Monday morning when a truck caught fire in the 200 East Area of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a notice posted on the website for the federal property. The fire occurred under the hood of the truck loaded with an empty container from the Site’s Environmental […]

The company decommissioning the Duane Arnold Duane Arnold Energy Center plans to start moving spent fuel from the shuttered plant’s reactor to dry storage this year, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector said Wednesday evening. NextEra should have the fuel on the move “starting in 2021,” Rex Edwards, an inspector working out of NRC’s Region III […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee was set Thursday to question the Joe Biden administration’s nominee to fill the final Senate-confirmed leadership post at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Biden nominated Corey Hinderstein to deputy administration for defense nuclear nonproliferation on Aug. 9. She is currently vice president of international fuel cycle strategies at the Nuclear […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a top electric power research group are renewing an unfunded five-year research agreement aimed at addressing nuclear plant aging and other challenges facing the aging fleet, according to a memo published Wednesday. In the memorandum of understanding signed last week by both parties, NRC and the Electric Power Research Institute […]

Department of Energy contractor officers should by Friday, and unilaterally, if necessary, modify the agency’s existing major site contracts to include a COVID-19 mandate, according to long-awaited guidance published Wednesday by DOE. The directive applies to “Management and Operating (M&O) contracts, major site/facility contracts and onsite support service contracts,” the agency wrote in the guidance.  […]

More than 60 members of the Washington state legislature have asked President Joe Biden to reconsider the Department of Justice’s challenge to an “overwhelmingly bipartisan state law to provide industrial insurance coverage to workers made sick” while doing cleanup work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In 2018 the legislature easily passed HB 1723 […]

There were 3,750 nuclear warheads in the U.S. stockpile as of Sept. 2020 the State Department and National Nuclear Security Administration said Tuesday, down more than 250 since the final year of the Barack Obama administration. State and the semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency disclosed the count after Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary for […]

Under the end state contracting approach, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has embraced indefinite duration, indefinite quantity agreements to a greater extent, the acting head of contracting, Angela Watmore, told an industry gathering in Eastern Tennessee Wednesday. “We took a hard look at where we were in the cleanup portfolio” for the […]

Many Air Force acquisition programs are “solid,” and “prudent,” the Biden administration’s nominee to lead those programs at the Pentagon told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday — “especially those which are currently modernizing the nation’s nuclear deterrent.” The declaration was part of Andrew Hunter’s advanced policy questions, which the former Pentagon hand and Hill […]

Personnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site recently tested a drainage system that will funnel byproducts of liquid waste cleanup to an outbuilding from the Low Activity Waste Facility, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said Tuesday. The system includes large tanks and miles of pipes inside the Low-Activity Waste Facility — […]

In a leadership shuffle last week Exelon Corp., Chicago, appointed leadership for a new offshoot company that would separate its power generation business — including nuclear — from its electric and gas sales and distribution businesses, the company said in a press release. Joseph Dominguez, who currently serves as CEO of Exelon subsidiary Commonwealth Edison, […]

A majority of staff at the nation’s top regulator for civilian nuclear power are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. Roughly 65%, or around 1,859, of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 2,860 employees have “certified that they are fully vaccinated,” a spokesperson told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing via email Tuesday.  Despite that statistic, […]