Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A Pentagon official pulled out of a scheduled public briefing about plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site on Monday because of a gag order imposed by a Biden Administration review, a group advising the South Carolina government on nuclear matters said. Drew Walter, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, was […]

The head of the joint venture that manages the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site expects the rate of employee COVID-19 vaccinations to go from a trickle to a steady stream in the near future. “We have about 1,500 folks that have an appointment ready to go for their vaccinations,” within the next couple of […]

The conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and Paducah Site in Kentucky came to a stop in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and had yet to restart as of last week, federal and contractor representatives said during an online conference. Neither Zachary Lafontaine, DOE’s program […]

The former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission joined the University of Michigan as an adjunct professor, according to a press release. The university’s Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Science (NERS) department announced that Kristine Svinicki joined the faculty in a March 8 statement. Svinicki will help to “define the new directions for twenty-first-century nuclear engineering” […]

Here are some public events related to defense-nuclear matters that the ExchangeMonitor staff is tracking this week: 2021 March 17: The DOE Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board for Nevada meets virtually at 4 p.m. Pacific Time. 17: Hanford Advisory Board kicks off a virtual two-day meeting at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. 18: The DOE Environmental […]

A Department of Labor board last week ruled against a Hanford contractor’s appeal of a 2016 decision favoring two whistleblowers at the former plutonium production site in Washington state. Labor’s Administrative Review Board on March 10 upheld federal Administrative Law Judge Christopher Larson’s 2016 ruling that Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) experts Kirtley Clem and Matthew […]

Paul Kreitz, who has helped manage planning and construction of pit production infrastructure at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the past two years or so, is leaving lab manager Triad National Security in late April, a lab official said this week. Kreitz was not one of Triad National Security’s key personnel. Before Los Alamos, […]

Christopher Hanson, the newly minted chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has seen nuclear energy from just about every angle the federal government looks at it. By the time he was sworn in as an NRC commissioner in June 2020, Hanson had done a five-year stint as Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) energy and water staffer […]

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission study recommending updates for disposal of very low-level radioactive waste is scheduled to wrap up this spring, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffer said this week. The commission’s very low-level waste (VLLW) scoping study is supposed to finish up in April, Stephen Koenick, NRC low-level waste project chief, said Wednesday in a […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could go offline for a major ventilation upgrade right around the time the Los Alamos National Laboratory starts casting new nuclear weapon cores and generating a slew of new defense transuranic waste, a lab official said Wednesday at the online Waste Management Symposia conference. “As we progress in our nuclear […]

The Department of Energy could lengthen contract transition periods under the new procurement model, possibly to 120 days, federal officials said Wednesday during the online Waste Management Symposia. Transition to the Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co. venture at the Hanford Site in Washington state, which ended in January, showed 60 days is insufficient to sort […]

Amentum- and Jacobs-led teams each recently clinched new cleanup contracts at the United Kingdom’s Dounreay site in Scotland. Site prime Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd., a consortium of Cavendish Nuclear, Jacobs and Amentum, awarded both contracts. The Amentum-led team had by far the bigger win, beating out five competitors, including a Jacobs-led team, to clinch a […]

Crews handling legacy cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory were relieved last summer to find an underground chromium plume remained static during three months of bare bones operations due to COVID-19 restrictions. “One of our concerns was the possibility of plume rebound,” where it might drift closer to local drinking water […]

Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based RSI Services is the winner of a potential five-year, $22-million small business contract to remediate Naval Reactors sites overseen by the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration in West Milton, N.Y. The set-aside cleanup contract for the Kesselring Site was announced Tuesday by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. Under the […]

The total volume of waste disposed of at the EnergySolutions facility in Utah was cut in half in 2020, a site executive said Tuesday. Vern Rogers, regulatory affairs director at EnergySolutions, said at a panel during the Waste Management Symposium that the roughly 100,000 cubic yard decrease in waste volume was due to the effects […]

During a brief appearance at an online conference Tuesday, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm simultaneously praised and challenged the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup community. “This industry is made up of some of the nation’s best engineers and scientists,” Granholm told the Waste Management Symposia conference, which in non-pandemic years happens in Phoenix. At the same […]

While General Atomics, GE-Hitachi and Westinghouse Government Services are companies that know their way around nuclear reactors, representatives from the firms said Tuesday they find it tough to penetrate the procurement market for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.   But the DOE Environmental Management (EM) office wants to increase the contractor pool serving […]

On March 24, 2020, when the Department of Energy altered operations to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hanford Site in Washington state rapidly went from having 400 to 4,500 people telecommuting, the head of the property’s service contractor told the online Waste Management Symposia on Tuesday. The transition to mass telework cleanup property occurred […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Monday formalized a decision to immobilize some 350 kilograms of plutonium used in a Japanese research facility into glass-like cylinders at the Savannah River Site rather than sending the material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency put the official stamp on […]

Dae Chung, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management’s (EM) associate principal deputy assistant secretary for corporate services, defended his organization’s small business record during the online Waste Management Symposia Monday. His comments come after a U.S. senator, among others, complained that new procedures seem to be hurting small contractors in Washington state that […]

The Department of Energy’s long-awaited Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory could start operating in mid-fall, perhaps October, a Fluor Idaho executive told the online Waste Management Symposia Monday. The facility is now in the final weeks of an extended maintenance period that will precede a 50-day test run and eventual approval […]

Although COVID-19 vaccines are starting to trickle across the U.S. population, it is difficult to say when most cleanup workers at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will receive their shots, a senior agency official said Monday at the all-online Waste Management Symposia conference. Environmental Management (EM)’s Deputy Assistant Secretary Todd Shrader would […]

President Joe Biden’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the Department of Energy is scheduled for his first make-or-break vote this week in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the panel announced Monday. At deadline, the committee was scheduled to vote on Turk’s nomination at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday. The former […]

Construction costs for a new ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could be up to $450 million, pending a recalculation, a Department of Energy official said Monday. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s (WIPP) planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) “has a cost range of $400 million up to $450 million,” Janelle Armijo, […]

Plutonium pits and command and control are the top nuclear priorities for Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) in the next federal budget cycle, the head of the House Armed Services Committee said Friday. The Joe Biden administration has yet to roll out its fiscal year 2022 budget proposal, blaming the hold-up on an allegedly intractable Donald […]