Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The National Nuclear Security Administration would be authorized to spend over $425 million more than requested for infrastructure in 2022, if a Republican amendment proposed for the next National Defense Authorization Act becomes law. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, announced his amendment on Monday, two days before […]

A bid protest filed in July after Navarro Research & Engineering won the $76-million Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contract from the Department of Energy has been dismissed. According to a notice filed Friday on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) website, the challenge lodged July 26 by Pecos Technical Solutions has been dismissed. At DOE’s direction, Oak […]

Washington is making a bad investment with proposed legislation providing tax credits to financially-struggling nuclear power plants, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups told members of Congress in a letter last week. Proposed bailouts for nuclear plants, which includes around $6 billion in the Joe Biden administration’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, “misdirects resources while perpetuating climate injustice,” […]

The House Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022 would authorize the full $6.84 billion sought by the Joe Biden administration for Defense Environmental Cleanup at Department of Energy nuclear sites, according to the chairman’s mark. Defense cleanup of 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites accounts for most […]

A wildfire that started last week at the Nevada National Security Site was still burning over about 490 acres north of the Site’s area 12 at deadline Monday. “The fire is not burning, and has not burned, in any contaminated areas,” the site wrote in a press release on Friday. “Due to inaccessibility of the […]

A proposed bill that would ban the storage of high-level nuclear waste in Texas got a new lease on life last week after its second iteration made it through the state House. The measure, proposed by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), passed via voice vote in a special meeting of the state House Friday evening. […]

Here are some events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week. 01: Markup: House Armed Services Committee (full). National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. 10 a.m. Eastern time. Venue TBA, streaming online via WebEx. 02: The Department of Energy and Nuclear Waste Partnership holds a […]

Veolia earned about 89% of its potential fee from the Department of Energy during its last seven months of analytic work at the Department of Energy’s 222 S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. That is according to a fee scorecard published by DOE earlier this month. A Veolia unit took home $148,707 […]

While the management contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has ordered its employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by this fall, the legacy nuclear cleanup contractor at the site had not, at deadline. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) “encourages vaccinations against COVID-19 among its employees and […]

NorthStar Medical technologies, Beloit, Wis., inked a $37-million cooperative agreement with the National Nuclear Security Administration to produce the medical isotope Molybdenum 99, the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency announced Friday. NorthStar, which had to put up matching funds to get the $37 million from the agency, will use the cash to produce the isotope […]

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 […]