Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

Karen Skelton has been named a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, DOE announced Wednesday in a press release. Skelton comes to the Joe Biden administration from California, where she spent the last decade as the CEO and founder of Skelton Strategies, a policy and political consulting firm working on energy, climate, technology  and […]

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee unveiled a proposed climate bill Tuesday that would classify nuclear energy as a “clean energy project.” The CLEAN Energy Act, introduced by committee chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) alongside Reps. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), considers nuclear to be a zero-emissions energy source. As a […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor, which began producing tritium for nuclear weapons on Nov. 19, will irradiate a bit more than half as many tritium-producing rods as hoped in fiscal year 2021, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Tuesday. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency had aimed to irradiate 992 […]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a petition to hear a challenge brought by New Mexico-based Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety over a Clean Water Act permit at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. The high court’s denial of certiorari, or “cert” in legal shorthand, means a decision last April by the […]

A federal magistrate judge in Ohio will hold a preliminary pre-trial conference by telephone March 25 in a lawsuit filed in September against current and former contractors for the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The corporate defendants in the case on Tuesday asked the judge to throw out the litigation, arguing in a […]

The story “Nuclear Fuel Services Gets $57M NNSA Contract to Prep for Weapons Uranium Work in Tennessee” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, March 2, 2021) should have said that Y-12’s Building 9212 will purify uranium until 2023 and possibly convert uranium oxides to uranium metal around 2030. The correction in Weapons Complex Morning Briefing (March 1, […]

The Department of Energy plans this week to test Saltwaste Disposal Unit 7, a key part of the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste cleanup effort, for leaks, the agency said Monday. Amentum-led contractor Savannah River Remediation is conducting what DOE described in a press release as a liquid tightness test, which involves pumping 33 million […]

The New Mexico Environment Department’s deputy cabinet secretary, Jennifer Pruett, is retiring in May after a 37-year career that included 20 years with the state agency. The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) said in a Monday press release it is actively working to fill the post by April. The deputy secretary is appointed by Gov. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission resumed anti-terrorism exercises at nuclear power plants with additional COVID-19 guidelines in February, the agency said. Force-on-force inspections started up again last month, NRC spokesperson David McIntyre told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in an email Monday. The agency had previously said in a February webinar with industry that exercises would resume […]

Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., last week received a long-expected $57-million contract to design and demonstrate highly enriched uranium conversion and purification for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency announced Monday. If the BWX Technologies subsidiary’s pilot meets the agency’s goals, the company could earn a follow-on contract to perform some of the uranium […]

French waste and water management corporation Veolia suffered a setback last week in its attempt to take over the Suez Group, another French conglomerate in the same business. In dueling press releases last Thursday and Friday, neither multinational corporation mentioned the effects of this takeover attempt will have on either’s North American operations, which make […]

After the COVID-19 pandemic struck the U.S. in 2020, Department of Energy contractor North Wind Portage actually hauled more contaminated material away from an old uranium ore processing site outside Moab, Utah, than it did during a corresponding period in 2019. That is according to data posted online by the DOE Office of Environmental Management […]

Kim Budil was set to take over as the 13th director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California on Tuesday. The younger of the two nuclear weapons design laboratories announced the change at top in late January. Budil replaces William Goldstein, who was to retire after six years as director and 36 years at […]