Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

Teams will soon be finalized to compete for the Department of Energy’s potential $26-billion Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract in Washington state, three industry sources said late last week. Two of the three expect a very small number of teams, perhaps as few as two, will be in the mix for the contract arising from […]

The Waste Management Symposia, a gathering of industry, government and academic nuclear waste specialists that can normally draw about 2,400 participants to Phoenix during March, starts today online with several sessions about the Department of Energy’s cleanup office. This year’s event, exclusive virtual due to COVID-19 precautions, kicks off at about 10 a.m. Eastern Time […]

A federal judge on Friday put an indefinite hold on a coalition of environmental groups’ petition against a proposed interim spent fuel storage site in west Texas, court filings show. The D.C. circuit court of appeals also agreed to consolidate the complaints filed by Don’t Waste Michigan, Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club against the […]

Progressive lawmakers Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) urged  President Joe Biden to scale back nuclear modernization efforts, including pausing development of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program and canceling new and planned low-yield weapons. In a letter sent Tuesday to Biden, Markey and Khanna raised concerns on the “unsustainable rate of […]

The interstate agency overseeing the Susquehanna River basin plans to review water usage at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant after an environmental watchdog alleged that the site was violating the law, the agency’s executive director said. Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) chief Andrew Dehoff told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in an email Wednesday […]

Members of Nevada’s congressional delegation plan to reintroduce a bill that would put an end to the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository, they said this week. The new legislation would be more or less the same as bills introduced last Congress that sought to bar federal spending on the authorized repository in Nye County, […]

Institutions formed in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster “serve to strengthen” the entire nuclear industry, the former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said at an international nuclear energy commission panel Wednesday morning. At the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) panel, George W. Bush-era NRC head Richard Meserve said that new institutions formed in Japan […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management still has much work to do on oversight of contracts and operations, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday in its annual update on high-dollar, “high-risk” issues. The DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which seemed to get a more generous review, “has continued to show leadership commitment […]

With the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico undergoing its regular annual maintenance outage, there were only three shipments of transuranic waste to the underground salt mine during February. Two of the three shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) during the month came from the Los Alamos National Laboratory […]