Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Todays’ computing, modeling and simulation tools, plus the National Ignition Facility that unlocks physics “not accessible in the laboratory,” have given nuclear-weapon stewards capabilities unimaginable almost 30 years ago, when the U.S. ceased explosive tests, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said Tuesday. “On all of those fronts, the capabilities we have in […]

The House and Senate are both expected to take votes today on a stopgap spending plan that could prevent federal government services from going dark at midnight, according to media reports. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was quoted by USA Today as saying the upper chamber can act quickly to try and get a […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. is again receiving transuranic shipments after a combination of underground conditions and temporary staffing problems from COVID-19 halted disposal for a month. “Yes, shipments resumed,” a spokesman for Nuclear Waste Partnership, prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), said by email Wednesday. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning to meet next week with the company in charge of decommissioning a New Jersey nuclear power plant to discuss several security violations at the site earlier this year. NRC was to host a pre-enforcement conference with Holtec International Oct. 6 to discuss an unspecified number of physical security violations […]

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson plans to file legal arguments with the U.S. Supreme Court by Nov. 15 responding to a U.S. Department of Justice petition to overturn a 2018 state law that made it easier for cleanup employees at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to qualify for worker compensation. That’s according to Brionna […]

A bill introduced in Congress Tuesday would create a task force to evaluate a loophole in federal law that the measure’s sponsors say would enable consent-based siting for a federal nuclear waste storage facility, according to a press release. If it became law, the “Nuclear Waste Task Force Act,” unveiled Tuesday in the House by […]

A federal court last week gave anti-nuclear groups two more weeks to coordinate next steps in their lawsuit challenging a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Texas. The groups, which include Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club, now have until Oct. 12 to move forward in their case against the proposed Interim […]

With Congressional Republicans threatening to thwart a stopgap funding plan to keep the government running beyond Thursday, the Department of Energy and other agencies could be forced to suspend operations. The DOE declined comment Tuesday, directing inquiries to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond by Weapons Complex Morning […]

The minority leader of the South Carolina Senate on Tuesday made an opening bid in the statewide tug-of-war over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal money up for grabs from last year’s plutonium settlement with Columbia: $100 million for the state, $425 million for seven counties near the Savannah River Site. “That would […]

A bill introduced in Congress Tuesday would create a task force to evaluate a loophole in federal law that the measure’s sponsors say would enable consent-based siting for a federal nuclear waste storage facility, according to a press release. If it became law, the “Nuclear Waste Task Force Act,” unveiled Tuesday in the House by […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessments office is opening an investigation into the flooding of Los Alamos’ PF-4 plutonium facility earlier this year, an event precipitated by an untrained worker operating a wet vacuum.  DOE’s internal watchdog notified lab director Thomas Mason of the impending investigation in a Sept. 23 letter posted online recently.  In […]

The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a June legal settlement between the state and the Department of Energy to prevent mislabeled radioactive waste shipments from again ending up at the Nevada National Security Site dominate the site’s just released 2020 environmental report. The settlement reached this summer calls upon DOE to increase the […]

Nuclear Weapons laboratories are outpacing production sites when it comes to vaccinating their workforces, according to the most recent data shared by National Nuclear Security Administration labs, plants and sites. At the Sandia National Laboratories, which has one of the largest workforces in the nuclear security enterprise, about 84% of the workforce had been vaccinated […]

United Steelworkers local unions at five Department of Energy sites are urging elected officials from their states to intercede on their behalf against President Joe Biden’s plans for mandatory vaccinations of federal contractor employees. “The government has not done a very good job of winning a large percentage of the public’s trust when it comes […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental justice review needs to prioritize actionable outcomes, stakeholders and members of the public said during an agency conference call Monday. “[I]t’s not enough for NRC just to review its policies,” said Leona Morgan, co-founder of New Mexico community organizer Nuclear Issues Study Group. “What we need to see is change, […]

A total of nine employees at the Department of Energy Hanford Site in Washington state informed management Monday they have tested positive for COVID-19. That is according to a post on a DOE website for Hanford maintained by Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions. Meanwhile, on Friday, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina posted on […]

About half of a Massachusetts nuclear power plant’s spent fuel inventory has been moved to dry storage, setting up the project for completion in late fall, the company in charge of decommissioning the sites said in a recent press release. Seventeen of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s 34 spent fuel canisters have been transferred to the […]

As of last week, the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico had excavated most potholes along a radiologically contaminated stretch of Middle DP Road in Los Alamos County, N.M., and believes the attendant risk to human health is low, a manager with the Department of Energy told a meeting […]

Here are some events related to civilian-nuclear matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week. September 27 – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is hosting a two-part virtual meeting on its environmental justice review. Information on virtual access available here. Starts 1 p.m. Eastern time. 28 – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is hosting an in-person meeting on […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee has demanded that the National Nuclear Security Administration come up with a “comprehensive strategy” for disposing of nuclear waste created by the ongoing 30-year refresh of U.S. nuclear weapons. The provision is part of the committee’s fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the full text of which the […]

The Department of Energy nuclear cleanup office has until Thursday to meet its own previously-announced target of issuing a final request for proposals this month for the multibillion-dollar  Savannah River Site Management and Operating Contract in South Carolina. Also, Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition will begin its 90-day transition Friday, Oct. 1, to head what is […]

A new Texas ban on high-level nuclear waste could be “potentially quite a playing field for lawyers coming up,” a member of an interstate nuclear waste compact told a citizens advisory panel in Vermont recently. The Lone Star state put the anti-nuclear-waste law on the books earlier this month and now, Austin and Washington must […]

A service life extension would be authorized for the B83 megaton gravity bomb in 2022 and every new president would have to review U.S. nuclear force posture, if a Senate committee’s version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) behind […]

Now that a state administrative law judge recommends the Department of Energy be allowed to continue digging a new underground shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., parties in the case have until Wednesday, Sept. 29, to file responses. In a 56-page report provided Sept. 14 to DOE, prime contractor Nuclear Waste […]

While the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad, N.M., field office believes passage of time has made transuranic drums stranded since 2014 at Waste Control Specialists in Texas safe for travel to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is not yet convinced. That is the crux of a Sept. 8  letter sent to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission nixed a New York county executive’s request for a full-time inspector to oversee the decommissioning of a recently-shuttered nuclear power plant, according to a recent letter from the agency. Placing a full-time resident inspector at Indian Point Energy Center “is not necessary to provide for the protection of the public health […]