Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office first rolled out its end state contracting model in 2018 and now wants to clearly define exactly how that model is supposed to work. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) tucked this nugget inside its Strategic Vision for 2021-2031. “In 2021, EM will implement a new End-State […]

The chair of the House Armed Services Committee quoted chapter-and-verse from his bible of nuclear weapon policies in a Tuesday chat with the D.C.-based Reagan Institute, during which he advocated for trimming the defense budget by preventing particular crises rather than gearing up to win an all-out war. “I think that we can have a […]

Managers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state have confirmed six more positive cases of COVID-19 since Saturday. The latest five were reported Tuesday in a note posted to a DOE website run by a Leidos-led Hanford support contractor. New cases at the former plutonium production complex have run in the low- […]

Within 10 years, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management hopes to have its vitrification plant humming at the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 40% of the tanks closed at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and also be about done with legacy cleanup at the Moab Site in Utah as well […]

In its final scorecard, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation earned 78% of the fee available to it for about four months of work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Altogether, the Jacobs subsidiary pocketed $6.36 million out of an available $8.16 million for the period from Oct. 1, 2020 through Jan. 24, […]

The next contractor in charge of moving defense-related transuranic to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., under a planned five-year contract may handle 500-to-800 shipments annually, the Department Energy said in comments posted online recently. “Over the last 10 years, WIPP carrier miles have varied greatly from roughly 300,000 miles to more than […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration appointed Jason Armstrong to lead the Savannah River Field Office, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon steward wrote in a press release on Monday. Armstrong was most recently assistant manager for nuclear safety and engineering at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Production Office in Tennessee, where he had worked […]

A nuclear watchdog group’s request to delay the sale of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating station is “procedurally improper and without merit,” and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should toss the group’s objection, agency staff wrote in a Monday brief. The group, Three Mile Island Alert, alleged that the FirstEnergy companies and an EnergySolutions subsidiary ran […]

The Department of Energy expects to issue the final solicitation for a new prime contract for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico between now and June, according to a Monday procurement notice. The agency said the final request for proposals (RFP) for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) should be out between 30 […]

President Biden’s nominees to lead the Nuclear Weapons Council and the Department of Energy’s intergovernmental affairs programs are headed to the Senate, the White House announced Monday. Michael Brown got the nod to be undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. If confirmed, he would lead the joint Pentagon-Department of Energy council that coordinates nuclear […]

The New Mexico Environment Department last week gave its blessing to a Department of Energy’s plan to commence remediation of radioactive contamination along a public road just outside Los Alamos National Laboratory property. The work plan stipulates that DOE will start its field work on Middle DP Road in April and it should last six […]

President Joe Biden on Friday said he will nominate former Federation of American Scientists and Al Franken Senate staffer Ali Nouri as the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs. Nouri has been with the agency since January as the deputy assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs, a post which did […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s planned revival of an underground ventilation fan that has been idle for years poses scant radiological risks, according to the Department of Energy and its prime contractor for the facility in New Mexico. Data gleaned from a four-hour test of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)’s 700-C ventilation fan on […]

Congress is in session. Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: April 12 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Virtual workshop with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) on spent fuel performance margins. Continued discussion on NEI’s 2019 white paper on spent fuel storage. Register […]

The companies looking to trade ownership of Indian Point Energy Center can participate in a federal case against the transaction, a judge ruled Friday. In an order dated April 9, a D.C. circuit court judge approved Entergy and Holtec International’s petition to join the case, filed Jan. 22 by the state of New York. The […]