Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s reactor regulation department is building a team to assess some key takeaways from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a draft mission statement. NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) will designate a working group to investigate “lessons learned and best practices on the oversight of power reactors during the COVID-19 pandemic […]

An uptick in COVID-19 cases and some uneven underground floor conditions led the Department of Energy to temporarily halt disposal of defense-related transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant recently, according to a safety board report. An increase in COVID cases required some Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) workers to quarantine, according to a […]

The full House on Tuesday evening passed a stopgap spending bill that would essentially freeze federal spending, including at the Department of Energy, at 2021 levels until Dec. 3. It was a party-line vote in the Democratic-majority chamber: 220-211, with one member not voting. The bill would make an exception to the 2021 budget for […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission again extended the deadline on the license transfer agreement for an Illinois nuclear power plant under decommissioning to give agency staff more time to clear the site for unrestricted use, according to a recent notice. The transfer of Zion Nuclear Power Station back to Exelon from EnergySolutions won’t need to be […]

An assistant attorney general for the state of Washington in a filing Monday asked a federal court to dismiss Gov. Jay Inslee (D) from litigation filed last month by an individual angered by COVID-19 policies implemented by both the state and federal government. Joseph B. Jensen, Sr., who reportedly works at the Department of Energy’s […]

A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently pressed the Joe Biden administration in a resolution to oppose a Canadian geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel planned for the Great Lakes Basin. In the Sep. 17 resolution led by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), the coalition of delegates from Great Lakes states like Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota urged […]

The Department of Energy wants its employees fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before Thanksgiving, which means they have until Nov. 8 to receive their final injection, according to a memo from the agency’s chief of staff. The memo, dated Tuesday from DOE’s chief of staff Tarak Shah and viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, does not […]

A dispute about the magnitude of a former employee’s theft from Sandia National Laboratory prompted an assistant U.S. attorney to refuse a request from the defendant’s lawyers that the U.S. District court knock two months off the former lab hand’s potential jail sentence. Joshua Cordova’s lawyers were seeking a 10-month sentence, on the basis that […]

The Department of Energy would keep its 2021 budget through Dec. 3, under a short-term stop-gap budget bill unveiled this week by the House Appropriations Committee. The bill would push an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling off until Dec. 16: an effort to untether continued funding for government agencies from the always-politically-contentious issue of […]