Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A bill to ban storage of high-level nuclear waste in Texas passed in a state House committee Wednesday, setting it up for a floor vote. The measure, proposed by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), passed in the Texas House Environmental Regulation Committee on a 6-2 vote. Landgraf chairs the committee. The panel reported the bill […]

Fasken Land and Minerals, Ltd. didn’t prove that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board erred when it rejected the company’s complaint about Waste Control Specialists’ proposed interim storage facility, so the NRC should let the rejection stick, commission staff said Monday. Fasken’s appeal is the latest in a series of objections to […]

The total civil penalties imposed by the state of Idaho against the Department of Energy for failing to treat sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho National Laboratory now exceeds $10 million, a state official said this week. As of March 31, the assessed penalty will hit $10,062,000, Natalie Creed, hazardous waste bureau chief for the Idaho […]

Anyone who wants to testify about or provide technical comments on the planned new utility shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant during a hearing scheduled for May 17 should let the New Mexico Environment Department know by May 3, the state agency said.  Late last week, the New Mexico Environment Department filed a formal […]

The impending closures of four nuclear power plants across the country could “give away years of progress” in decarbonizing the U.S. energy sector, the head of the industry’s biggest trade group said Tuesday. “Our climate plans can’t work if we go backwards by shuttering our nuclear plants, but that’s exactly the possibility we face,” said […]

The Department of Energy is gathering information on firms interested in providing support services to the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee, an organization of 20 federally-recognized tribes touched by shipments of nuclear waste. The request for information notice was posted Tuesday on a federal procurement website by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy’s Office of Integrated […]

Nuclear weapons are one of a trilogy of high-spend programs likely to affect defense spending decisions for years, the chair of a House Appropriations panel said Tuesday in an online hearing. “Cyber security, nuclear modernization and overseas contingency operations funding sound like they’re three unrelated topics,” Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chair of the House Appropriations […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is independent from the Biden administration’s energy goals, but that shouldn’t “be an impediment to innovation and deployment,” the agency’s chairman said at an industry summit Tuesday. The NRC’s regulatory independence is a critical element of ensuring public trust, Christopher Hanson said during his opening remarks to the U.S. Nuclear Industry […]

FirstEnergy Corp. told the Ohio state government the company should not have to refund $30 million collected from Ohio ratepayers under scandal-tainted legislation passed in 2019 to support two financially struggling nuclear reactors.  FirstEnergy says it should be able to keep the money because the law, which guarantees the company a profit of $102 million […]

Following a protest by a rival bidder with the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Energy is taking a second look at the $1-billion security contract it awarded last month to a joint venture led by Securitas CIS for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. A notice posted on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) […]

Non-nuclear weapons programs should be prepared to pay the bills for the nuclear programs, if it comes to that, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), one of the biggest nuclear weapons stakeholders left on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday. “Nuclear deterrence is the number one mission of the Department of Defense,” Fischer said in an […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend North Wind Solutions’ transuranic waste processing work by up to 24 months at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, according to a recently-posted notice on a federal procurement website. The DOE issued its justification for issuing the extension, without a full and open competition, on Thursday. The federal […]

A bill pending in the Texas state legislature’s environment committee would ban the storage of high-level waste, including spent nuclear fuel, in the Lone Star State, its Republican sponsor said Monday The measure would “eliminate the need to conflate the phantom menace of high-level radioactive waste” with comparatively safe low-level waste and ensure that the […]

This week marks the end of a mandatory waiting window for the Texas A&M University’s Board of Regents to officially approve Katherine Banks, dean of the College of Engineering and vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories, as the system’s next president. At deadline Tuesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, the board of regents was […]

The Department of Energy has named Mark Bollinger as its new acting deputy manager for the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, which oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Bollinger took over the No. 2 manager slot on March 14 at Carlsbad, reporting to manager Reinhard Knerr, according to a Twitter post last week from […]

Earnings improved at Centrus Energy Corp., the Bethesda, Md.,-based fuel broker and nuclear technology company, in both the fourth quarter and 2020 as a whole, according to financial results released late last week. In its Thursday press release, Centrus reported net income of $54.4 million for the 12 months ended Dec. 31, 2020 compared with […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the companies involved in the sale of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station have a little over three weeks to respond to an environmental group’s request to hold off on the transaction, according to an agency filing. The NRC, the FirstEnergy companies and the EnergySolutions subsidiary responsible for decommissioning the […]

The Senate is primed this week to confirm David Turk as the deputy secretary of energy after a procedural motion last week to end debate on the former Biden staffer and Obama administration official. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the majority leader, filed cloture on Turk’s nomination Thursday, meaning the Senate had, starting then, a little […]

After a former lobbyist accused him of sexual harassment, Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), whose 23rd congressional district includes the West Valley Demonstration Project, will retire from the House of Representatives rather than run for re-election, the lawmaker announced via Twitter on Sunday. Reed further said he will not seek any political office in 2022. The […]

The story “False High Dose at Pantex This Year Caused by Lost Badge Near Linear Accelerator” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, March 18, 2021) should have said that the Nevada National Security Site analyzed a Pantex Plant employee’s dosimeter.

It can happen on submarines, it can happen in the mail and it can happen if you fly a lot: a dose big enough to keep you out of radiological areas for a while. At the Pantex Plant earlier this year, it happened because someone left their dosimeter near a linear accelerator. That’s according to […]

Next week, a committee of the Texas state House of Representatives will consider a bill that would ban storage of high-level nuclear waste, including spent fuel from power plants, in the Lone Star state. H.B. 2692, proposed earlier this month by state Rep. Brooks Landgraf (R), will hear debate in the state’s House Environmental Regulation […]

An environmental watchdog group that previously raised concerns about environmental law violations in the sale of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station is now formally asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pump the brakes on the transaction, according to new documents. In a motion dated Monday, Three Mile Island Alert (TMIA) argued that until the […]

The Department of Energy, Washington State and the Environmental Protection Agency are meeting more frequently these days to negotiate changes to legally binding Hanford cleanup deadlines that longstanding technical challenges — and later, COVID-19 — may have made untenable, a Washington state official said Wednesday. “I am optimistic on some progress we have made,” Bowen […]

The Department of Energy could formally reply to subcontractor complaints at the Hanford Site in Washington state “within the next few days or the next few weeks,” Brian Vance, the top manager at the facility said Wednesday. The DOE Office of Environmental Management executive made his comments during a virtual meeting of the Hanford Advisory […]

Virginia-based Bechtel announced in a press release this week that Stephen Bechtel Jr., who served three decades as CEO of the privately-held company that bears his family’s name, died Monday at age 95. In 1960 Stephen Bechtel Jr. became CEO of the company started by his grandfather in 1898, according to the Washington Post, and […]