Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

An article in the Feb. 16 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing (“New Mexico Hearing on WIPP Shaft Set for May”) should have said that May 17 is the date for the hearing on the planned new utility shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The Joe Biden administration ought to look at undoing the legal deadlines the National Nuclear Security Administration faces to begin production of new nuclear weapon triggers, a former senior official with the agency said Wednesday. “I think the administration needs to look at how those statutory timelines really line up to the programmatically driven timelines […]

Randall Hendrickson is now the deputy chief of corporate services at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, according to the latest organizational chart dated Feb. 11. The job, which reports to the Environmental Management (EM) office’s associate principal deputy assistant secretary Dae Chung, was vacant as recently as Jan. 28, according to prior […]

A major environmental group asked a judge to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reconsider a basket of objections to the licensing of an interim storage site, including one the agency initially acted on, according to court filings last week. Sierra Club filed a petition Feb. 9 in D.C.’s Ninth Circuit court to reopen nine […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 20 shipments of transuranic waste during January, which represents its highest monthly total since October, according to the facility’s online waste information database. There were 12 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory and eight from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. […]

The Washington Department of Ecology is taking public comment through March 25 on proposed modifications to the state’s permit for key equipment used to help control liquid waste volume in underground tanks at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site. The original transfer lines that connect double-shell tanks holding radioactive waste to the 242-A Evaporator flunked […]

A story in the Feb. 09, 2021 issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing (“Jacobs’ Profits Edge Up in Q1; Revenue Stable”) should have said that Jacobs’ profits increased in the first quarter of 2021 on both an adjusted and unadjusted basis. The story was also updated with the correct earnings figures for each period.

Northrop Grumman “successfully conducted its first major design review” for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent engineering and manufacturing development baseline last November, the company announced Tuesday. Northrop touted the milestone as the new Joe Biden administration prepares its first federal budget request and Congress continues its work confirming Biden’s nominees to top Pentagon posts. A […]

The Senate Armed Services strategic forces committee will retain some of its nuclear backbone in the 117th Congress with Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who has a major nuclear constituency in the form of the Triad’s land-based leg, retaining her leadership role. That’s less nuclear leadership than the panel, which writes policy for nuclear forces and […]

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.  […]