Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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, […]

A Sept. 23 article in Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“DNFSB Questions if Time Made Stranded Drums Safe for Travel”], should have identified a Sept. 8 letter to the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office as a letter requesting a report. The article relied upon an incorrect reference to the letter on the Defense Nuclear Facilities […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission promoted Daniel Dorman to director of operations, the agency wrote Tuesday in a press release. Dorman is assuming his new post effective Oct. 10, NRC said. The former deputy executive director of the commission’s reactor and preparedness programs is stepping up to replace Margaret Doane, who is leaving NRC Friday for […]

The Department of Energy’s advisory board for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio has postponed its meeting set for Thursday in Piketon, Ohio and will reschedule it at a later date, according to a statement Monday from the administrative contractor for the board. An email from EHI Consultants, on behalf of the advisory board cited two […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy has finished tearing down the last of 18 buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif., the agency said Monday. The last of the buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), Sodium Pump Test Facility, came down Friday, […]

Air Force pilots in F-35A aircraft recently wrapped up the final two of 10 guided release tests to certify the jet to carry the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb, the Air Force said Monday in a press release. Two F-35A Lightning II aircraft, piloted by the The 422nd and 59th Test and Evaluation Squadrons, took off […]

The former head of the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the one-time number-two at the National Nuclear Security Administration will lead the latest incarnation of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the Department of Energy said Monday. Stanford University professor Arun Majumdar, once the head of the Joe Biden administration’s transition team for the Department […]

An updated version of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s guidance for preventing workplace sabotage and other insider threats at nuclear power plants should come out this month, the agency said Monday. NRC staff are “in the final steps” of revising the commission’s Insider Mitigation Program (IMP), an agency spokesperson told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing via email […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General has a busy fiscal 2022 schedule of audits and inspections planned for projects affecting the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Last Thursday the DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its work plan for the fiscal year that began Friday. […]

A two-year extension on highly enriched uranium exports for production of the Molybdenum-99 medical isotope is set to come to an end in January, but the National Nuclear Security Administration was preparing to take public comments starting Tuesday about extending those exports. Federal law effectively allows the Secretary of Energy to unilaterally extend exports of […]

The utility company in charge of two financially-struggling nuclear power plants in Illinois is reversing course on its shutdown plans after a state bailout in September gave the reactors a new lease on life. In Federal Register notices published Friday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Exelon’s withdrawal of license amendments that would have let the […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week. 05 – Virtual event, Hudson Institute: The Iran Nuclear Showdown: What’s Next? 12 p.m. Eastern time. Non-government speakers. Register here.  05 – Virtual meeting: Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes. 10 […]

Ty Blackford, who was CEO of the Jacobs subsidiary formerly in charge of cleanup at the Central Plateau of the Hanford Site in Washington state, is leading transition efforts for the Jacobs-led joint venture scheduled to take over remediation for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory by Jan. 1. That is according to a […]

John Dorrian will retire from Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., on Dec. 31, after 27 years with the company, most recently as controller and chief accounting officer, the uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology developer announced in a recent regulatory filing. “It is anticipated that Mr. Dorrian will continue to provide transition services to the […]

A federal judge nixed a fishing expedition for a big tranche of data sought by people who live near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site and who are trying to organize a class action lawsuit against eight current and former DOE contractors at the rural Ohio site. In a mid-September court filing,U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth […]

Although the looming threat of a shutdown appeared to have dissipated at deadline Thursday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was prepared to keep the lights on for a bit if federal funds dried up because Congress and the White House could not agree on a budget for the 2022 fiscal year that starts after […]

Workers who secure a religious exemption to the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will be barred from the lab and allowed only to go on vacation or take leave without pay until they quit their jobs or get vaccinated, according to an all-hands memo from lab Director Thomas Mason. “On October 15, staff […]