Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The president of News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) Glenn Morgan is leaving his post with the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and taking a job with Huntington Ingalls Industries. “I wanted to let you know that I have been called upon to fill a corporate position for […]

Nuclear services company EnergySolutions is adding another decommissioning project to its portfolio with the purchase of a long-shuttered nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, according to a press release Wednesday. Dominion Energy, the current owner of Kewaunee Power Station in Carlton, Wisc., signed a definitive agreement to sell the plant to EnergySolutions, according to the Wednesday […]

An April 16 staff report by a federal watchdog questions if the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration have fully learned lessons stemming from a drum breach and radiation release that shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in February 2014. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) […]

The Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee was scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday evening on the budget needs and posture of U.S. nuclear forces. Vice Adm. Johnny Wolf, the Navy’s director of strategic systems programs, and Gen. Timothy Ray, commander of Air Force global strike command, are the scheduled headline witnesses. The hearing will […]

A swap of common shares for preferred shares led to a $2.2-million first-quarter loss for Centrus Energy Corp.’s  common shareholders, as revenue rose across the board, the Bethesda, Md.-based nuclear fuel reseller and enrichment technology developer wrote in its latest quarterly earnings report.  Centrus’ net income was $5.1 million for the three months ended March […]

Generating loss resulting from the retirement of nuclear power plants will be offset this summer by “a return to more normal operations” at existing reactors, the Department of Energy’s energy statistics agency said in a new report Tuesday. In their summer 2021 electricity industry outlook published Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast that generation […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied a request for a new rule that would establish a framework for restarting retired nuclear reactors, according to a notice published last week. There’s not enough industry interest in a regulatory framework to reauthorize operations at retired reactors, NRC said in its denial of a 2018 petition for a new […]

The Department of Energy was scheduled to brief a local agency-chartered advisory group on Wednesday about plans for a new landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.  A DOE draft record of decision is expected in July on the proposed Environmental Management Disposal Facility, designed to handle low-risk construction material from building demolition at […]

Early in-person voting started last week and runs through May 29, for the June 1 special election in New Mexico’s Congressional District 1, which is home to the Sandia National Laboratories. The seat was vacated by Rep. Debra Haaland (D), she was confirmed as the Joe Biden administration’s secretary of interior on March 16. The […]

Ex-Sandia National Laboratories employee Joshua Cordova has pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and now awaits a sentencing in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico after allegedly ripping off the government for somewhere between $75,000 and $140,000, according to a plea agreement filed last week. Cordova, who helped train military, law-enforcement and emergency […]

As part of a flurry of Department of Energy appointments on Monday, the Joe Biden administration made nuclear engineering professor Kathryn Huff the acting head of DOE’s nuclear energy office. Biden appointed Kathryn Huff principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy, second in command at the DOE office that oversees research on nuclear energy and […]

The Department of Energy has issued a request for information on “innovative approaches” for information technology at the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico. This ranges from workaday software to cyber security solutions for the office that oversees agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), according to a notice published Thursday on a federal procurement website. […]

After a companion bill died in the state legislature’s other chamber, the Texas state Senate should hear debate this week on a controversial bill that would ban the storage of high-level nuclear waste in the Lone Star State, according to the floor calendar. S.B. 1046 is on the full chamber’s schedule for Monday. There aren’t […]

The Department of Energy is picking up its option to keep Centerra Group on through at least Oct. 7 as provider of security at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina while the agency continues to review a 10-year, $1-billion follow-on contract awarded in February to Securitas CIS. A DOE spokesperson said in an email […]

There were 177 active, confirmed COVID-19 cases across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s civilian and contractor workforce in the first week of May, the agency reported Friday, keeping current infections around the plateau they fell to in April. Week-to-week, active cases among National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) civil servants and contractors was down by 55, […]

Profits were about flat at Dallas-based Jacobs in its second fiscal quarter that ended April 2, something the international engineering and construction services company attributed to its March acquisition of a 65% stake in PA Consulting, which advises energy, defense and government clients. During the same period last year, Jacobs suffered a $122 million net […]

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by a prominent nuclear trade group over the agency’s interpretation of very-low level waste disposal regulations.  The court lacked jurisdiction to make a ruling, according to a filing Tuesday. If a 2019 letter to industry from NRC detailing its interpretation of […]

A bill that would have banned storage of high level waste in Texas was yanked ahead of a scheduled floor vote in the state’s House of Representatives for being “substantially and materially misleading,” the state Speaker of the House said. H.B. 2692, proposed in March by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), got tossed back into […]

California-based radioactive waste disposal company Deep Isolation is expanding its search for clients to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. The company this week announced it is teaming with Dominion Engineering Inc. of Reston, Va., to combine their nuclear-fuel-disposal technologies with an initial focus on Latin American. “This is potentially a good market,” said Deep Isolation’s chief […]

The 16th secretary of energy is scheduled to face the Department of Energy’s congressional appropriators in an open hearing for the first time today, with the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee set to hear testimony on DOE’s so-far incomplete 2022 budget request at 1 p.m. Eastern time. The Joe Biden administration has yet […]

The Justice Department has formally closed out its fraud case against Mission Support Alliance, the joint venture that formally provided landlord services at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, according to a settlement filed last week with a federal court in Washington state. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson of the Eastern District […]

The Department of Energy is making plans for replacement of the emergency operations center at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina by late 2028, according to one of the procurement documents published last week. Last week DOE issued its draft request for proposals for the Savannah River Site Operations Acquisition, a contract which could […]

A frequently-used Department of Energy subcontractor is dropping its lawsuit against a large contractor over business at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Professional Project Services or Pro2Serve or filed a joint motion to dismiss April 15 with Leidos Integrated Technology and its Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) joint venture in U.S. District Court for […]

The Department of Energy and its legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory said Tuesday an interim groundwater pump-and-treat system to contain a hexavalent chromium plume is now fully operational. Three extraction wells and two injection wells that came online this month are part of what DOE dubbed an “interim measure” to control […]

An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile failed to launch as scheduled from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California after a ground abort in the early morning hours on Wednesday, the Air Force wrote in a statement. “The cause of the ground abort is currently under investigation, and Air Force Global Strike Command is assessing […]

A Texas House of Representatives adjourned Tuesday without voting on a proposed bill that would ban the storage of high-level nuclear waste in the Lone Star State, leaving a decision on the measure for a future meeting. The second reading of H.B. 2692, introduced in March by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), was postponed following […]

The Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology have been involved in so-called “holistic” talks with the aid of a federal mediator since June 2020, the parties told a federal court Friday. With a confidentiality deal in place, publicly the parties have said little, other than that talks are ongoing, with the […]