Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

Robert Edwards III, a seasoned hand around the weapons complex, has retired as manager of the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office, DOE confirmed Thursday. Edwards retired effective July 31 “after 35 years of federal service,” and Joel Bradburne, the deputy manager for the Lexington, Ky., office in charge of the Portsmouth Site in Ohio […]

Perma-Fix President and CEO Mark Duff said Wednesday he was “disappointed” with the environmental services company’s second quarter financial performance, which he blamed on complications related to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. For the quarter ended June 30, Perma-Fix posted company-wide net income of around $3 million or $0.25 per share, according to an earnings report […]

A $1-trillion infrastructure bill with tax credits for financially-struggling nuclear power plants passed the Senate on a widely bipartisan vote Tuesday.  The infrastructure package cleared the Senate in 69-30 and now heads to the House, whose members were scheduled to return to Washington on Aug. 23 to vote on the measure. If the bill becomes […]

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality is taking comments between now and Sept. 1 on its conditional approval of a Department of Energy request to push the startup of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit to September 2022. In March, an executive with contractor Fluor Idaho told the Waste Management Symposia that the site might start […]

The Air Force on Wednesday morning launched a non-nuclear Minuteman III missile, carrying what the service called a “high-fidelity joint test assembly,” from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Air Force announced the early-morning launch in a press release. Supporting the test launch from the west coast were Air Force personnel from the 341st […]

Bethesda, Md.,-based Orano has a new management team and several new board of directors for its Federal Services Business unit that does business with the Department of Energy, the company said early Wednesday. Orano Federal Services President Dorothy Davidson said in a press release that the new management team will include: Joe Faldowskim, chief operations […]

Bradley Wallin will lead Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s nuclear weapons programs, settling a succession that began when Kim Budil was promoted to lab director earlier this year, the design lab announced Monday. Separately, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that Jeff Harrell, the federal manager for the agency’s Sandia Field Office, retired in July. […]

Navarro Research & Engineering should take over Sept. 1 as the new Technical Assistance contractor at the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, an agency spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. The Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based company, which beat out five other bidders for the potential five-year, $72-million small business set-aside, received its notice to proceed […]

The company in charge of decommissioning Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power station accused a nuclear watchdog of serious process fouls after the group’s latest attempt to halt the plant’s license transfer, according to a regulatory filing. NRC should no longer allow Three Mile Island Alert to “blatantly ignore” reasonable requirements of public participation in […]

Oak Ridge, Tenn.,- based Navarro Research & Engineering won the $76-million Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contract from the Department of Energy and promptly drew a bid protest by a firm called Pecos Technical Solutions. A DOE chart of major contracts for the Office of Environmental Management, updated July 21, has Navarro taking over from incumbent North […]

On Monday, not long after senior nuclear-weapons managers gathered outside of Washington and lamented programmatic gear-grinding caused by what they called premature attempts to pin down costs, the House Armed Services chair asked the president to consider shrinking the arsenal, in part over concerns about its affordability.   The Biden administration’s forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review should […]