Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The COVID-19 pandemic did not take a holiday during Christmas week, with new infections reported at Department of Energy nuclear cleanup operations such as the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Supervisors at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) were notified of nine positive COVID-19 cases between […]

A single-owner team led by Battelle Memorial Institute will manage the Savannah River National Laboratory for up to 10 years under a potentially $3.8 billion contract announced Tuesday by the Department of Energy. Battelle Savannah River Alliance, LLC (BSRA), Columbus, Ohio, beat out three other bidders for the cost-plus-award-fee contract just awarded by DOE’s Environmental […]

Cold War and Manhattan Project locations being cleaned up by the Department of Energy could be viable candidates for new nuclear power plants, a federal official said during an online presentation Wednesday. About a dozen of the 16 nuclear cleanup properties run by the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) boast “unique characteristics” potentially attractive […]

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not publish next week in observance of the Christmas holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Monday, Dec. 28.

The Washington state Department of Ecology will hold an online public hearing Jan. 21 on proposed modifications to certain facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. The DOE and contractor Washington River Protection Solutions seek a class 2 modification to allow expansion of loading areas at the Liquid Effluent Retention Facility and the 200 […]

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), whose district includes the Savannah River Site, has tested positive for COVID-19, the congressman’s office said in a statement late Wednesday. “Earlier this evening I learned that I have tested positive for COVID-19,” Wilson said in the written statement posted to his website. “I will be taking all necessary precautions, as […]

A group led by Navarro Research and Engineering is expected to start its transition Jan. 4 as the new contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a source said Tuesday. Hanford’s DOE site manager, Brian Vance, said last week during an appearance before the Hanford Advisory Board to expect the new […]

The Department of Energy should designate someone as a sort of crisis-response czar in case of another national emergency such as COVID-19, according to an agency report on the pandemic published Wednesday. DOE should revise existing crisis response plans to, among other things, “[p]rovide the Secretary with latitude to designate a director or ‘person in […]

A bill to delay ratepayer-funded subsidies to two financially struggling Ohio nuclear plants cleared a key committee by a thread on Wednesday, setting up a possible floor vote before Christmas.   The House Energy Policy and Oversight Committee voted 8-7 on Wednesday to send House Bill 798 to the House Rules Committee, which on Thursday […]

There will not be a new director at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for another few months at least, a spokesperson for the younger of the two U.S. nuclear-weapon design labs said Tuesday. “We are not expecting a new director to be named until February at the earliest,” the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) spokesperson […]

WIPP Takes in 15 Shipments During November The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 15 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during November. There were five from the Idaho National Laboratory, six from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, three from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and one from the […]

The draft Record of Decision on a proposed 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is being delayed once again, with the new publication target being next July. The document was previously scheduled for publication this week by the DOE Office of Environmental Management at Oak Ridge. But spokespeople […]

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) to be Secretary of Energy, media reported late Tuesday. Granholm, who is deeply familiar with U.S. auto-making, will be a key ambassador to industry when Biden enlists the DOE’s help bolstering his agenda to fight climate change, outlets reported, citing people familiar with the […]

An article in Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“Meeting on LANL Stormwater Scheduled for This Week,” Dec. 15, 2020] should have identified Huntington Ingalls Industries as the lead partner in Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B). An article in Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“Law Pausing Ohio Nuclear Plant Subsidies To Be Heard Tuesday,” Dec. 14, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is preparing a final environmental review for its new plutonium disposal program at the Savannah River Site, but not the thorough review a National Academies panel recommended earlier this year, the agency announced Wednesday. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency published its notice of intent to do an […]

The Department of Energy’s manager for the Hanford Site in Washington state expects the stabilization of three crumbling underground waste structures near the Plutonium Finishing Plant to be shored up by the end of January. “We expect to complete that project by the end of January,” Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance told a meeting of […]

The former finance chief of Mission Support and Test Services LLC, who alleges he was fired last year for exposing financial misconduct at the Nevada National Security Site by company president Mark Martinez, has less than two weeks to revise his lawsuit before a federal judge throws it out for good. Ex-Chief Financial Officer Stephen […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected a plea from the Nuclear Energy Institute to continue with its current policy of temporarily halting force-on-force inspections — simulated terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants — into 2021 last week.  The policy, a guidance called IP 92707, was issued early in the pandemic and allowed the assessment of individual […]

A Palisades Community Advisory Panel has been formed in the Michigan-based Palisades nuclear plant host community. The plant is located in Covert Township, which had a population of just under 3,000 residents in the 2010 census and sits on the coast of Lake Michigan some 70 miles south of Grand Rapids. The township is located […]

The Department of Energy and its legacy cleanup contractor for the Los Alamos National Laboratory will discuss 2021 plans for improved stormwater runoff around the lab during a public meeting Wednesday evening. It is the second of two required semiannual meetings by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management at the federal complex and remediation contractor, Newport […]

Fourteen new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state over the weekend, putting the site’s cumulative case count at more than 500 since the pandemic hit the U.S. in January. Eight workers at the former plutonium production facility informed management Friday they had tested positive for […]

The New Mexico Environment Department is still waiting on the Department of Energy to provide more details on the planned remediation of contamination discovered earlier this year on a public road outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The preliminary screening plan that will determine if the hazardous constituents at the 28-acre DP Road site are […]

A third hearing will be held Tuesday on Ohio House Rep. Jim Hoops’ (R) bill to delay subsidies granted in the controversial nuclear bailout law passed in 2019 to help keep two of the state’s nuclear plants financially solvent.  House Bill 798 will delay payments to the plant for at least one year while former […]

The Department of Energy extended the bid deadline for a new Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contract by one week, to Dec. 23. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the extra time in a package of questions and answers on the business published Friday on a procurement website. Previously, bids were due today. The DOE acknowledged […]

Seventy-four employees have agreed to take a voluntary buyout from the decommissioning and demolition contractor at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth announced the results of its Self-Select Voluntary Separation Program in a Wednesday email statement. The voluntary buyout package includes a severance based on years of service and the applicable […]