Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Public interest groups are ready to sue the Department of Energy and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration over what they claim is insufficient review of plans for expanded plutonium pit production in South Carolina and New Mexico. The coalition claims the government failed to adequately review plans to “vastly ramp up production” of nuclear […]

A federal appeals court Wednesday hit the pause button on an environmental group’s recent petition against the licensing of a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, after combining it with a similar case from last year, according to the court docket. Sierra Club’s April 14 petition against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is on […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup sites will stick with “maximum telework” for the time being, the No. 2 boss at the Office of Environmental Management said Tuesday. “As of right now there is no change in our status that we have been in for several months of maximum telework,” Todd Shrader, DOE’s principal deputy […]

Reducing the political space for dialogue with Russia was a “critical error” in U.S. foreign policy and will hamper efforts to negotiate a new strategic arms limitation treaty with Moscow, a former energy secretary said during a webinar Tuesday. There’s “a lot of interest” in a new arms control treaty on both sides of the […]

Preserving the country’s civilian nuclear power fleet is “critical” to meeting federal clean energy goals, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee told the Joe Biden administration Tuesday. “As a zero-emissions baseload fuel source, I believe that maintaining our fleet and preventing closures of existing nuclear plants is critical to achieving emission […]

People in Nevada don’t want to see the U.S. government resume underground explosive-nuclear weapons testing in their state, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.   “Nevadans do not want to return to a time when there was explosive nuclear testing in our state,” Rosen told Admiral Charles Richard, commander […]

The changeover in presidential administrations has slowed appointments to Site Specific Advisory Boards for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, a federal executive said Tuesday. Appointments to the Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board have “ground to a halt,” Gregg Murray, a member of that panel, told an online meeting of Environmental Management […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has “limited information on the prevalence of sexual harassment” in its nuclear security forces and needs to take steps to comply with federal anti-harassment policies, said a government study published Monday. The NNSA currently doesn’t meet the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) guidelines on responding to and preventing workplace […]

The stories “Watchdog Group to File TMI Response with NRC Today” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, April 19, 2021) and “NRC Staff Tell Commission to Nix TMI Clean Water Allegation” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, April 13, 2021) should have said that the TMI-2 license was transferred from the FirstEnergy companies to TMI-2 Solutions.

A Nevada Democrat sponsoring a bill that would ban funding for a federal nuclear waste repository without stakeholder consent said Monday the Joe Biden administration and the Department of Energy are in the Silver State’s corner. “With President Biden and Secretary Granholm, I believe we have partners who will help advance these ideas and move […]

The U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has awarded Lynchburg, Va.,-based BWX Technologies contracts worth about $2.2 billion for making naval reactor parts and fuel, the company said in a Tuesday morning press release. BWXT Nuclear Operations Group sites in Virginia, Ohio and Indiana will manufacture nuclear reactor components for Columbia and Virginia-class submarines over an […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s staff “intentionally mischaracterized” a nuclear watchdog group’s request to hold up the sale of Three Mile Island Generating Station Unit 2 when it recommended the agency toss the petition on procedural grounds, according to a new filing. Three Mile Island (TMI) Alert’s March 15 request to pause the plant’s Unit 2 […]

A National Academies panel said Monday that monitoring, detection and verification of nuclear weapons and fissile material should be a higher national security priority and that more government coordination is needed on the issue. That is the crux of an interim report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, published Monday. The report, […]

The Department of Energy said Monday the solicitation for a new five-year, $100-million transportation contract for its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico should be released in the next 25-to-60 days. As a result, the final request for proposals (RFP) for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Transportation Services Procurement should be out by […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration and the prime contractor for the Y-12 Nuclear Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn., are working with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to shrink the high-security protected area around Y-12 by almost  half. Ground was broken April 7 on the $160-million West End Protected Area Reduction project, […]

The Department of Energy’s decision to issue a sole-source contract for construction of a nuclear cleanup research center in South Carolina to an affiliate of North Wind Group is justified in part because it helps the agency meet its annual obligation to small businesses, according to a recent procurement notice. The contract for construction of […]

A nuclear watchdog group that opposes the sale of Three Mile Island Generating Station will file further arguments against the transaction today, the group’s president said. Three Mile Island Alert will file its response today to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff’s recommendation that the agency toss the watchdog group’s request to hold the sale of […]

Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: April 19: The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine holds a virtual seminar on its new Nuclear Proliferation and Arms Control report at 2 p.m. Eastern time. 20: The Nuclear Threat Initiative holds a […]

Barring extensions, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has four contracts set to expire within the next 60 days, according to the contract summary page for the $7-billion-plus nuclear cleanup branch. Portsmouth Mission Alliance, a partnership between North Wind Group and Swift & Staley, has the roughly five-year, $190-million infrastructure service contract at […]

The United Kingdom will plow ahead with its new submarine-launched warhead no matter what happens this year with the planned W93 in the U.S., and the warhead replacement program has nothing to do with the Kingdom’s recent decision to increase its warhead cap, an official with the Ministry of Defence said this week. The U.K. […]

President Joe Biden will nominate Jill Hruby, former director of the Sandia National Laboratories, to lead the National Nuclear Security Administration, the White House said Wednesday. Hruby led Sandia for about two years during the Barack Obama administration, from mid-2015 to mid-2017. Since then, she has worked as an independent consultant, logging time on federal […]

The president of a nuclear watchdog group said Wednesday that his organization’s recent motion to hold the sale of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station was “appropriate” after Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff recommended that the agency scrap the request. Eric Epstein, president of Three Mile Island Alert, said that the group’s March 15 motion to […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Wednesday published a minor amendment to Waste Control Specialists’s state radioactive material license, allowing the company to keep potentially combustible drums of Department of Energy transuranic waste at a commercial site in Andrews County until Dec. 23, 2022. The amendment proposed Dec. 9 by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) […]

Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance, the former landlord services contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, settled a fraud lawsuit, reportedly for $6-million, in a case brought two years ago by the Department of Justice. “I can confirm that this case has been settled,” Bob Miller, a spokesman for the Leidos-Centerra joint […]

There are “significant opportunities” for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to apply industry recommendations to its current approach to the safe dry storage of spent nuclear fuel, a trade group representative said at an agency workshop Tuesday. “It’s our intent to use and consider risk principles in assessing safety margins for dry storage, for the uniform […]