Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A building that handles high explosives at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, briefly shut down earlier this month after a worker’s dosimeter showed up with an unusually high dose — after it was “inadvertently lost” in the facility by its wearer, a spokesperson for the plant said Tuesday. “It is believed that the employee’s […]

A New Jersey district court judge signed a settlement Feb. 9 ending a legal feud between Holtec International and Lacey Township, N.J., over fuel from the Oyster Creek Generating Station, according to court papers. Judge Michael A. Shipp signed the order, setting the stage for Holtec to move forward with the decommissioning of Oyster Creek, […]

The New Mexico Environment Department plans consider the Department of Energy’s plan to sink a new utility shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in a Zoom hearing on May 17, an environmental activist told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The first day of the hearing will run from 12 noon through 4 p.m. Mountain Time […]

President Joe Biden’s nomination of David Turk to be the deputy secretary of energy was formally sent to the Senate late Thursday and referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Senate was not in session Monday due to the Presidents Day holiday and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had not […]

A Tennessee environmental group is not planning to sue the National Nuclear Security Administration again over the Uranium Processing Facility, despite reserving the right to do so in a recent court filing. “[W]e have no plans at the current time to file additional litigation,” Ralph Hutchison,  coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, wrote […]

By April, both of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s next-generation plutonium-pit factories should reach the critical decision 1 milestone that solidifies the long-conceptualized designs of the facilities intended to manufacture new nuclear-weapon cores for most of this century. The semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency is planning the Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project at the Los […]

Non-essential workers in many areas around the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state are staying home Monday due to adverse weather, according to an advisory posted on an operations website run by a contractor. The stay-home advisory applied to non-essential day shift workers north and south of the Wye Barricade, including Richland, according […]

The New Mexico Environment Department has scheduled a virtual community engagement meeting Feb. 25 to discuss issues on the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, including radioactive contamination found on a public road  outside the federal complex. The session, which will be held via Webex, is planned from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Mountain Time. […]

An article in the Feb. 9 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“DOE Moves Closer to Cleaning Up Major Transuranic Tranche at Idaho”] should have reported that shipment of 5,700 cubic meters of transuranic waste remaining in interim storage at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is expected to take […]

Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the ExchangeMonitor staff is tracking this week. February 16 Bid deadline for proposals on the potential $8.3-billion Oak Ridge Reservation Cleanup Contract in Tennessee. 

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management selected Herndon, Va.-based SRS Critical Infrastructure Security as the winner of the new Security Services Contract, potentially worth $1 billion over 10 years, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. SRS Critical Infrastructure Security, or SCIS, is composed of Securitas CIS, K2 Solutions, Spectra Tech, Inc. […]

In what could be one of the final motions in the case before it heads toward a trial, the ex-chief financial officer of Mission Support and Tests Services repeated his argument that a federal anti-corruption law aimed at public companies applies to the private contractor, and that he filed whistleblower disclosures about financial impropriety at […]

Amentum, Apex Systems and Leidos on Wednesday said they have formed Integrated ICBM Support Services, LLC, a joint venture aimed at capturing the Air Force’s next support contract for its current and future ICBM force. BAE Systems currently supports the ICBM Integration Support Contract (ISC), which is managed by the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center […]

The Nevada Senate got another would-be Biden administration official to pledge no funding for Yucca Mountain on Wednesday during the confirmation hearing for Neera Tanden to be the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Tanden, former president of the Center for American Progress, told Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) during the hearing […]

The trade group for the nuclear industry doubled down on a legal argument that the Nuclear Regulatory’s Commission’s 2019 interpretation of very low-level waste disposal guidelines illegally burdened licensees and should be reversed, according to a recent filing with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Moreover, NRC’s 2019 interpretation is not merely repetition of established […]

President Joe Biden plans to nominate David Turk as the deputy secretary of energy, according to a Wednesday White House news release. Turk, a member of Biden’s Department of Energy transition team, is currently deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), where he has worked since 2016 after leaving the Barack Obama administration.  […]

In addition to serving in key leadership posts for Republican presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, who died over the weekend at age 100, was also a top Bechtel executive in the 1970s and 1980s. Shultz first joined Bechtel in 1974 as executive vice president and “already had more experience and accomplishments […]

The former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration is one of the hundreds of people who will be caught up in the Joe Biden administration’s purge of Pentagon advisory boards this month. Ex-Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty got a spot on the Defense Policy Board during the eleventh hour of the Donald Trump administration, shortly after […]

The chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s environmental subcommittee did not rule out interim nuclear waste storage sites as a part of the Biden administration’s climate agenda during a press conference Tuesday. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), who heads up the Environment and Climate Change subcommittee, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing during the virtual […]

The DOE Office of Environmental Management released a new organizational chart on Monday, on which William (Ike) White is labelled as acting assistant secretary for environmental management.  As recently as Jan. 20, White was still listed as a senior adviser for DOE environmental management (EM). The retooled org tree also lists John Jones as acting […]

Another environmental group asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to delay the licensing of Interim Storage Partners’ proposed consolidated interim storage facility in west Texas, according to a Wednesday morning appeals court filing. In the filing, anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse the licensing proceedings […]

After disposing of only 192 shipments of transuranic waste during 2020, the Department of Energy expects the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will receive many more over the next 12 months as the COVID-19 pandemic gradually subsides. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) could receive up to 325 shipments of transuranic waste for disposal between Feb. […]

As of Tuesday, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Department of Energy are still tinkering with a draft memorandum of understanding about sharing information at nuclear-weapon sites while a Donald Trump administration order limiting DOE interactions with the board remains in effect. That’s according to a spokesperson for the independent federal board, which […]

Jacobs Engineering, the Dallas-based parent of multiple nuclear-cleanup and nuclear-weapon site contractors, saw profits rise about $20 million in the first quarter of 2021, while revenue stayed flat, the company reported Tuesday morning.  That accounts for adjustments related to the 2019 sale of the company’s Energy, Chemicals and Resources division to Australia’s Worley, and other […]

A group dedicated to supporting communities around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is still seeking a new executive director, which would be its third in three years,  and is planning to discuss the issue Friday. The Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC) board of directors will discuss a request […]

The end is within sight for the Department of Energy’s effort to treat 65,000 cubic yards of transuranic waste, held in interim storage at Idaho National Laboratory, to the Waste isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Of the material shipped to Idaho from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado between 1970 and […]