Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A budget markup of the Joe Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act made its way through the House’s energy panel Tuesday, with the majority shaking off a couple of attempts by Republicans to get more nuclear energy in the mix. The energy subsection of Congress’s budget reconciliation recommendations passed on a 30-27 party-line vote during […]

In a move necessary to produce hundreds of kilograms of energy-dense, U.S.-origin uranium fuel for DOE, Centrus Energy Corp. extended a lease on Department of Energy buildings at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio for three years, through 2025. The buildings support the 16-machine cascade Centrus, Bethesda, Md., is building for DOE under a $115 […]

The Army Corps of Engineers gave North Wind Portage the green light to continue its cleanup work at a former beryllium manufacturing plant in Ohio, a company spokesperson said Tuesday. North Wind, which was awarded the $82 million contract for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) Luckey site on August 18, has received […]

A group of Maryland environmental activists Monday protested Congress’s proposed tax credits aimed at saving economically-troubled nuclear power plants, according to a press release. Activists from Beyond Nuclear and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) among others delivered letters Monday to Reps. Jamie Raskin and John Sarbanes (both D-Md.) during a “national day of […]

The Justice Department last week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a 2020 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a state law making it easier for workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to win compensation for work-related health problems. The move has prompted swift rebukes from the Washington […]

Recent federal employee forms show 90% of workers at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board have been vaccinated against coronavirus infection, a spokesperson for the board said Tuesday. All Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) personnel have submitted the recently-required forms to attest to their COVID-19 vaccination status, said Tara Tadlock, associate director for board […]

Construction of a plant to treat mercury-laden water stemming from building demolition at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is more than a third complete, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. Construction of the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility by a joint venture of Louisiana-based APTIM and Idaho-based North Wind is about 35% […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s highest-ranking career executive is leaving the agency next month, according to a press release Monday. Margaret Doane, who currently serves as NRC’s executive director of operations, will leave her post effective Oct. 8, the agency said in a statement Monday. Doane is headed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) where […]

After recording one of its busier months in more than a year, shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s underground disposal site near Carlsbad, N.M., declined in August. Data available Monday on the DOE’s public website for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) show only seven shipments during August, with the most recent […]

The Department of Energy last week defended a 2020 update to a key nuclear safety management regulation but said the agency will work with a federal nuclear watchdog over its “technical concerns” with the final rule — including as it relates to aging nuclear facilities. The DOE “continues to conclude that its current regulatory framework, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission opened the door for history Monday when it approved a private company’s application to build what would be the only consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the U.S.. In a much-anticipated decision Monday, NRC greenlit Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in Andrews County, […]

The current trillion-dollar nuclear modernization regime is based on obsolete thinking that fails to consider the emerging nuclear danger posed by China, the head of U.S. Strategic Command said Monday at the virtual STATCOM Nuclear Deterrence Symposium. The U.S. is modernizing against “old requirements” developed with the assumption that China is a “lesser included case” […]

Nuclear power in Illinois may be getting a new lease on life after the state legislature voted Monday to approve subsidies for two economically-troubled power plants. The Illinois state Senate voted 37-17 Monday in favor of a bill that provides around $700 million in credits for the Byron and Dresden nuclear power plants. The subsidies, […]

A second draft of the Department of Energy’s Record of Decision to build a new on-site landfill for low-level radioactive waste at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is now expected in mid-October, the agency said late last week. Originally slated to appear this week, publication of the updated draft has been pushed back until […]

A liberal bloc of House lawmakers on Friday urged President Joe Biden to cut the nuclear weapons budget in fiscal year 2023.  In a letter led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the bloc of 29 U.S. representatives told Biden “to use the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) to set a nuclear strategy that aims to […]

Westinghouse is bringing in a former Holtec Decommissioning International c-suite executive to take over its biggest business line, the company announced last week. Pamela Cowan, who was senior vice president and chief operating officer of Holtec’s decommissioning branch, will become president of Westinghouse’s Americas operating plant services unit, according to a press release published Thursday. […]

Preliminary figures show the liquid waste cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has roughly two-thirds of its workforce vaccinated against COVID-19, a spokesman said Friday. The numbers are not final because DOE certification of vaccination forms were not due until Friday, a spokesman for Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation […]

The sale of a Wisconsin nuclear power plant is getting more scrutiny, as a second decommissioning company got permission Tuesday to get involved in a review of the transaction. Dominion Energy already agreed to sell the Kewaunee Power Station to EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, for decommissioning, but the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is reviewing the […]

The federal government needs to do more than just prop up existing nuclear reactors to achieve its climate goals, executives of a major nuclear non-profit and a labor union said in an op-ed Wednesday. Though the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) both “welcome” the Joe Biden administration’s trillion-dollar […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still keeping its workforce at home as the COVID-19 Delta variant spikes infections across the country. NRC is following the Office of Management and Budget and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for managing the pandemic, a spokesperson for the agency told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing via email Wednesday. […]

Mark Anthony will move to New Mexico from Lund, Sweden, where he directed construction of a multibillion neutron source, to lead the new plutonium infrastructure directorate at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the lab said this week. Anthony’s appointment, effective Nov. 1, follows a four-month search for someone to head the plutonium infrastructure directorate, which […]

The Department of Energy’s cleanup contractor at a uranium mill tailings pile near Moab, Utah has moved about 74% of the radioactive material to a disposal site 30 miles away, according to an update posted online this week. In August, North Wind Portage shipped 73,923 tons of tailings and debris from the former Atlas Minerals […]

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it plans a 90-day comment period concerning a proposal to grout up to 2,000 gallons of low-activity tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington and transport it out of state for final disposal. In an initial 14-day comment period on the Test Best Initiative that ended last Friday, […]

New nuclear arms-control agreements should focus on all Russian nuclear weapons, including those unrestricted by the New START treaty, and “pursue new risk reduction measures” with China to address Beijing’s “rapid and opaque nuclear buildup,” the new U.S. under secretary of state for arms control and international security said this week. Bonnie Jenkins, confirmed to […]

A bill on the Texas governor’s desk that would ban the storage of high-level nuclear waste has the support of a coalition of anti-nuclear groups, according to a Tuesday press release. Representatives of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, Public Citizen and the Texas branch of the Sierra Club applauded the state legislature […]

A Louisiana nuclear plant that shut down as Hurricane Ida battered the state last week will soon resume normal operations, the utility company that owns the site said Tuesday. Entergy Nuclear has “completed all necessary internal readiness reviews and has received recommendations and approvals” from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart Waterford Steam Electric Station, […]