Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted four nuclear power plants exemptions to federal regulations governing employee work hours and training during the month of April, according to a notice published by the agency Tuesday. Between April 6 and April 29 NRC granted work-hour control exemptions to: Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan; Clinton Power Station in […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will make a final decision about whether to license one of two proposed interim storage sites for spent nuclear fuel “shortly after” it completes environmental impact statements for the project this summer, the agency’s spent fuel licensing project manager said Tuesday.  NRC is “currently close to completing the final safety evaluation […]

After a lawsuit by gold companies forced it to back off its initial selection of a commercial site in Texas for long-term storage of elemental mercury, the Department of Energy is again shopping around for a contractor and Waste Control Specialists is again one of the finalists. That is a key takeaway from DOE’s notice […]

Without much Republican support, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday favorably reported the Joe Biden administration’s nominee for the State Department’s top arms control post to the Senate floor. The vote in the evenly divided committee was 12-10 on Bonnie Jenkins’ nomination for under secretary of state for arms control and international security. The […]

The Savannah River Site in February completed upgrades to tritium processing facilities at the site’s H-Area that will allow personnel to fill tritium reservoirs for the planned B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb life-extension program, the site said Tuesday. The upgrades doubled the capacity of one of the site’s tritium lines capacity, according to a press release, […]

The Department of Energy and contractor Fluor Idaho said in a Tuesday press release the final shipment of radioactive waste has been placed into the 97-acre Subsurface Disposal Area at the Idaho National Laboratory. The disposal area, which began accepting waste in the 1950s and has since accepted laboratory-generated waste and shipments from the Rocky […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it still needs more information from Holtec International to complete a required safety evaluation of the company’s proposed interim storage facility in New Mexico — a precursor for licensing the facility to accept spent nuclear fuel. The agency’s Request for Additional Information (RAI) regarding the safety evaluation report for the […]

A regional group to promote communities around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has reportedly decided to close up shop. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Monday the Regional Coalition  of LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] Communities voted during its Friday online meeting to start wrapping up operations. The move […]

National Engineering and Technology Solutions of Sandia, the Honeywell-owned prime for the Sandia National Laboratories, agreed to a $152,000 settlement with the Department of Energy over the unauthorized disclosure of classified information at the lab some time around 2019. The fine was not the only penalty Sandia paid, but other details of the enforcement were […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory has hired enough criticality safety personnel to support planned manufacturing of nuclear-weapon cores at the New Mexico laboratory, but staff churn among these crucial workers is more common than the lab believes, a new DOE review said. Lab management and operations contractor Triad National Security “has adequately managed the training and […]

Members of the public only have a few days to get in their comments on a proposed license amendment enabling cleanup operations at the Church Rock uranium mine, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The last day for comments on the agency’s draft environmental impact statement for the action is Thursday, NRC has said. The […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico now has a public website about its efforts to remediate contamination along a public road in Los Alamos County. Radioactive contamination was discovered in February 2020 within a 28-acre parcel of land along DP Road that DOE had already […]

Once again, the Congressional Budget Office’s biennial cost estimate for the 10 years of nuclear modernization spending has arrived just in time for the yearly federal budget debate on Capitol Hill. The latest congressionally mandated report from the non-partisan office covers planned spending from 2021 through 2030, during which Pentagon and Department of Energy programs […]

The top fed at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has reversed course and will keep the mask mandate in place for now regardless of whether workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. After initially saying last week fully-inoculated employees could stop wearing face coverings as soon as Tuesday, Hanford’s site manager Brian […]

The former Sandia National Laboratories director nominated by President Joe Biden to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration was scheduled for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Jill Hruby was slated to appear alongside three other Biden administration nominees, including Frank Rose, the man nominated to be her deputy at […]

The company in charge of decommissioning Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey finished moving the plant’s spent fuel inventory into dry storage last week, according to a press release. Oyster Creek’s decommissioning is “on track for becoming the most expedited decommissioning program in the nation’s history,” Holtec International said in a press release […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management plans to relocate some transuranic waste from the Nevada National Security Site to the Idaho National Laboratory where it will be prepared for eventual shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The transuranic material is what “we refer to as the Nevada spheres,” Robert […]

Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: May 27 – Confirmation hearing: Senate Armed Services Committee. Nominations — Hruby, Rose, Rosenblum, Maier. Includes Jill Hruby, nominees for administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, and Frank Rose, nominee for principal deputy administrator […]

A wildfire at the Nevada National Security Site moved into an area containing radiological contamination from a Cold War-era test over the weekend and continued to burn as of deadline Monday, according to the former test site. “Estimates provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center indicate potential radiological exposures for onsite […]

The next big contract procurement update from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should be out by Independence Day, according to a Thursday notice. The next quarterly procurement update from the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center will be posted within about 30 to 45 calendar days, meaning it should be out by July […]

In a budget hearing that was mostly a best-of, a couple Senators asked the acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration about alternative means of meeting the mission objectives of the day, including by producing pits at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or buying, instead of enriching, uranium needed to produce weapons-tritium in the […]

The Department of Energy announced Wednesday a new program aiming to reduce the volume of spent nuclear fuel produced by advanced reactors, according to a press release. The “Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems” (ONWARDS) program under DOE’s existing Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will get up to $40 million in funding from […]

The state of New York’s public service committee voted unanimously Wednesday to approve a proposed joint settlement agreement in which the company set to decommission Indian Point Energy Center will commit to greater financial transparency and community engagement. The New York Public Service Commission’s 4-0 vote at a virtual meeting Wednesday to greenlight the April […]

The Department of Energy’s goal of establishing a “clean energy standard” for zero-carbon sources of electricity will ensure that demand for nuclear power stays high in the face of mounting plant closures, the Secretary of Energy said Wednesday. “The number one solution the [Joe Biden] administration believes is very important for nuclear’s future is to […]

A Northern Arizona University researcher, Michael Ketterer, recently reasserted findings from 2019 that radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio poses a concern for people outside the fence, and local leaders are using his analysis to press for federal money to replace a shuttered school. In an April 28 letter to […]