Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Secretary of Energy will head off to Europe next week to lead the U.S. delegation at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference, the Department of Energy announced Thursday. At the annual conference in Vienna, Austria, Secretary Jennifer Granholm will give a speech “underscoring the use of nuclear to combat climate change, advance medical […]

In an announcement with implications for a wide cross section of nuclear policy professionals and the nuclear industry, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that Australia will acquire nuclear attack submarines — of origin and fuel type yet to be determined — as part of a new trilateral accord with the U.S. and the U.K. After […]

In a court case over an interim storage facility planned for New Mexico, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tapped the judge’s shoulder Tuesday to let him know they had licensed a similar site just one state over. In a Tuesday court filing, NRC alerted the U.S. District Court for New Mexico to a license the agency […]

Oregon state officials are “cautiously” behind the U.S. Department of Energy’s effort to “prove out” technology to grout up to 2,000 gallons of low-activity tank waste at the Hanford Site in neighboring Washington and dispose of it outside of the Pacific Northwest. “Oregon has not previously issued public statements regarding the Test Bed Initiative,” Maxwell […]

A U.S. congressman representing the Texas county slated to host an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to walk back its approval of the site in a press release Tuesday. “The decision handed down by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license a new nuclear waste storage site in […]

The story “NRC Gives its Blessing to Interim Storage in Texas” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, September 14, 2021) should have said that the bill signed into law last week by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) only banned the storage of high-level nuclear waste.

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 […]