Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Swift and Staley may yet keep a key small business support contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky after the Court of Federal Claims last week granted motions sought by the contractor in a lawsuit.  A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday issued a written opinion, not yet publicly available, in an appeal Swift […]

An Ohio lawmaker has requested the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio seek a third-party investigation of its former chair who resigned due to a scandal over state subsidies for two FirstEnergy nuclear reactors. On Wednesday, state Rep. Jeffrey Crossman (D) sent a letter to current Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) chair Jenifer French requesting […]

If the Department of Energy does not make an award soon for the Integrated Mission Completion Contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the agency might need to contact bidders to ensure offers on the multibillion-dollar procurement are still good, sources said this week. The DOE issued its request for proposals nearly 11 […]

The company in charge of decommissioning nuclear power plants in Massachusetts and New Jersey claims it’s transferring both sites’ spent fuel inventories to dry storage at an “unprecedented” pace, according to a press release Tuesday. At Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, spent fuel is being transferred to dry storage from the plant’s spent fuel […]

The House should vote Sept. 27 on a bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes a cash injection for financially-struggling nuclear power plants, now that Democrats have resolved an intra-party logjam. Party leadership settled on that date Tuesday after several days of negotiations with dissenting House Democrats who did not want to continue work on a partisan […]

The Democrat-led House Armed Services Committee has proposed authorizing a little more funding than requested for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s portfolio of nuclear weapons programs in fiscal year 2022, according to a copy of the chairman’s mark. Under the draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would be authorized […]

Jill Hruby, who became administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration in the second year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, praised the Los Alamos National Laboratory this week for requiring lab personnel to get vaccinated against the disease. “I applaud the decision that Dr. Mason and Triad have made to protect their people from this […]

A bill proposing to ban high-level nuclear waste storage in Texas, which previously died in the state legislature, is getting a second wind during a special session, with some minor alterations. State Rep. Brooks Landgraf’s (R) reintroduced measure, which passed the Texas House’s environmental regulation committee on a 6-2 vote Monday, aims to prevent high-level […]

The Government Accountability Office has formally dismissed a bid protest brought last month by incumbent Centerra over the Department of Energy’s $1-billion security contract award to a rival at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina — but that might not be the end of the dispute. In a notice dated Aug. 9, the Government […]

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the immediate past administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, joined Westinghouse Government Services’ board of directors, the parent company announced Monday. Westinghouse Government Services is a separately organized LLC and wholly owned subsidiary of the nuclear-plant designer, now owned by a subsidiary of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management. Government Services goes after DOE […]

Federal employees, embedded contractors and others at Department of Energy sites are now expected to divulge whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 — and the Los Alamos National Laboratory is requiring its personnel to be fully vaccinated. Triad National Security, the lab’s management and operations contract for the National Nuclear Security Administration, disclosed the […]

The Department of Energy is taking public comment on a draft environmental assessment of its plan to grout up to 2,000 gallons of low-activity tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington and ship the material out of state.  The 14-day public comment period on the Test Best Initiative, officially started Saturday and runs through […]

An unused spent fuel storage canister once intended for use at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station arrived at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Wednesday to become part of an investigation into long-term storage solutions for the nation’s nuclear waste, the lab said. An Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) research team in Oak Ridge, Tenn., […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received 41 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste in July, making it one of the busier months since the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading in the United States in early 2020. Last month’s total is up from the 23 shipments in July 2020, during deep pandemic times. It is […]

An ad hoc committee of the South Carolina legislature was scheduled to discuss on Aug. 24 which of the counties surrounding the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., will share in a $600 million federal plutonium settlement. “I want to make sure our friends from Aiken understand that Aiken County is not the only consideration […]

Shortly after the House and Senate united to protect the Department of Energy’s inertial confinement fusion program from some proposed austerity next fiscal year, the program’s emblematic National Ignition Facility shattered its own record for neutron yield. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced the milestone Tuesday, about a week after the Aug. 8 shot in […]

President Joe Biden’s administration is starting to weigh potential nominees for a permanent assistant secretary for environmental management, including one who has held the post before, an industry source said last week. Under consideration for a possible return to the nuclear-weapons cleanup office is Monica Regalbuto, who led the office from 2015 until 2017 and […]

Centrus Energy Corp. has identified about $9 million worth of pandemic-related expenses at  its new enrichment cascade in Ohio and wants the Department of Energy to help defray the costs, the company in a regulatory filing. “[W]e plan to seek additional funding commitments from DOE for the additional costs,” Centrus wrote Aug. 13 in its […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday offered a strongly-worded rebuke to the New Mexico attorney general’s claim that a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel violates federal law, according to a new court filing. NRC has the right to license commercial facilities under the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), the agency argued in the […]

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will be published on Tuesday and Thursday only during the weeks of Aug. 16, 2021 and Aug. 23, 2021, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess.

Facing a tough comp that included a big one-time payment, profits fell year-over-year at Centrus, Bethesda, Md., in the second quarter of 2021, though core operations remained essentially healthy and the company scored a crucial regulatory blessing for a new enrichment cascade. The fuel reseller and enrichment technology developer posted quarterly net income attributable to […]

After Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) this week mandated state employees get vaccinated for COVID-19 by Oct. 4, the Washington Department of Ecology, state regulator for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, delayed a planned “soft reopening” of its offices previously scheduled for August, an Ecology spokesman said Tuesday. The reopening has been pushed back […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will end mandatory telework and allow in-person work to resume by the end of next month, the agency said in a recent letter to staff. As part of its “full re-entry” program, NRC staff can return to their offices September 26, the agency said in the letter dated July 30. Although […]

Lack of an Illinois legislative solution has convinced Exelon to proceed with its plans to close its Byron and Dresden reactor complexes in September and November, respectively. Exelon originally announced its plans to shut down the four reactors at the two sites in August 2020 because of revenue shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of […]

On Monday, the Central Plateau Cleanup Company awarded a $9.5 million subcontract to DGR Grant Construction Inc. of Richland to build a steel enclosure over the site’s K East Reactor.  The work is to be finished by 2023. The Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCC) is the prime contractor for solid waste cleanup in the […]