Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday greenlighted the transfer of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 license to EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions from FirstEnergy Companies for decommissioning.  Three Mile Island’s Unit 2, located 10 miles from Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg, shut down in 1979 after its core partially melted down in the biggest accident in […]

Russia would still do a deal with the Donald Trump Administration to extend the New START nuclear arms-control treaty, but a five year extension would be best, because negotiating a follow-on treaty will be very difficult, the Russian ambassador said Wednesday in a webcast hosted by a D.C. think tank. “If anybody can call me […]

In a special session of the Ohio legislature on Wednesday, one lawmaker defended his proposal to delay, rather than outright repeal, a rate increase levied by a controversial, corruption-stained nuclear power-plant bailout passed in 2019. Another hearing will be held Thursday after the regular session. Rep. Jim Hoops’ (R) bill HB 798, unlike competing proposals […]

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Committee approved its bi-partisan American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020 at a Wednesday business meeting. If passed, a tall order, with less than a month remaining in the 116th Congress, the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020 (ANIA) would by January 2022 require the Department of Energy […]

The personnel churn in the Donald Trump administration’s nuclear-weapons enterprise and Joe Biden’s election as President of the United States highlight the urgency of giving the administrator of the National nuclear Security Administration a fixed term, members of a National Academies panel said Wednesday. “At the moment we not only have secretary and deputy secretary […]

Leaving 110 stranded drums of potentially combustible transuranic waste from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory at a commercial waste facility in Texas for two more years poses no significant risk, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday. The commission issued its finding Tuesday in the Federal Register, responding to an August request from […]

The head of the committee tasked with reviewing legislation to repeal a controversial Ohio nuclear bailout law, House Bill 6, will hold a hearing Wednesday on a bill that would put the bailout on hold but won’t necessarily repeal it.  Rep. Jim Hoops’ (R) proposed HB 798 wouldn’t overwrite HB 6, but would instead delay […]

On Tuesday, another Democratic lawmaker called for President-elect Joe Biden to publish what would be the third U.S. nuclear posture review in as many administrations — a potential step toward altering the course of the nuclear modernization regimen that started in 2016. “They’ll have to do a top-to-bottom review of these programs and think about […]

Four weeks after election day, first-term incumbent Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) has clinched a 333-vote victory over California Assemblywoman Christy Smith (D) in the state’s 25th congressional district. The race concluded Monday as Smith conceded a recount was unlikely to overturn the verdict, the Santa Clara Signal and other state newspapers reported. “We exhausted every […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Monday moved to reassure the city of Oak Ridge that moving some uranium purification outside the fence at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge Tenn., will not cost the site any jobs. The city raised the alarm in a statement issued before the Thanksgiving holiday last week, […]

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Nominating Council is seeking a new chairman after its former leader resigned two weeks ago, when his home was raided by the FBI, according to a Monday press release. The raid happened just days after FirstEnergy Corp., the energy utility at the center of one of the largest public […]

Another 16 workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state informed management Monday they have tested positive for the coronavirus. The latest COVID-19 cases were disclosed on the emergency operations website run by contractor Mission Support Alliance at the former plutonium production complex. The unofficial tally of cases is now 244 based […]

There were 270 new, confirmed COVID-19 cases, including another fatal case, among National Nuclear Security Administration contractor employees and civil servants as of the end of the Thanksgiving holiday week, an agency spokesperson said Monday. The fatal case was at the Los Alamos National Laboratory: the second COVID-19 death at the nation’s first nuclear weapons […]

The top boss for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina said Monday that major contractor awards could be made soon and there have been “somewhere north of 700” total confirmed cases of the coronavirus at the complex so far. “We continue to get COVID cases […]

An environmental advocacy group focused on the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site issued a report  last week that questions safety compliance at a commercial waste treatment facility, Perma-Fix Northwest, located just outside the former plutonium production reservation. The report by Hanford Challenge claims the subsidiary of Atlanta-based Perma-Fix has “a checkered and worrisome history of […]

In a statement before Thanksgiving, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo condemned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s long-telegraphed approval of the sale of Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear plant to Holtec Decommissioning.  “Cleaning up Indian Point will be complicated and expensive, and for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to act without considering New York’s request for a hearing is […]

Local officials with the City of Oak Ridge slammed the National Nuclear Security Administration’s decision to shift some national security work to BWX Technologies Subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., from the Y-12 National Security Complex. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency informed the city of the move in an email the day before […]

The management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico learned of 13 new cases of COVID-19 at the disposal facility just prior to Thanksgiving. Nuclear Waste Partnership, DOE’s prime contractor at the transuranic waste disposal site, reported the latest set of infections in a press release last […]

Potential bidders on the new Infrastructure Support Services Contract at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio can perhaps take time to watch football and eat turkey over Thanksgiving, as the agency has extended the deadline from Dec. 1 until Dec. 10. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) on Tuesday issued an amendment […]

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not publish on Thursday, Nov. 26, in observance of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Look for the next edition in your inbox on Nov. 30.

Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.), whose district includes Augusta, a major bedroom community for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in neighboring South Carolina, has tested positive for the coronavirus. “I have been undergoing regular COVID-19 testing and learned today that I have tested positive for COVID-19,” Allen said in a press release posted on […]

Thanksgiving has plenty in common with a congressional hearing about nuclear-weapons production infrastructure, if you think about it. One day, a lot of folks who know each other well but see each other seldom gather round a big table, make small talk, and (to the extent that decorum and tempers allow) probe weightier issues. And […]

Some residents of South Bruce, Ontario, the pop. 5,000 potential host site of Canada’s sole permanent geological repository, don’t approve of or don’t understand the government’s plan to store waste there, according to a poll. South Bruce is one of two potential sites being considered by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the Canadian agency […]

President-elect Joe Biden will announce his Secretary of Energy soon, according to his newly appointed chief of staff Ron Klain.  Likely contenders include people who served in the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, including former secretary Ernest Moniz, Arun Majumdar and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall. Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee is another rumoredly potential pick. […]

The Nuclear Waste Fund held $42.6 billion in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of the 2020 fiscal year, up from $40.9 billion last year, according to this year’s annual independent Department of Energy audit. Accounting firm KPMG performs the audit each year under the DOE’s Office of Inspector General. The federal fund is meant […]

Plutonium pits, Cold War liquid waste and stricter policing of the contractor base are among the biggest management challenges for the Department of Energy in fiscal year 2021, the agency’s Inspector General wrote this week in the latest version of an annual report. Pits are new on the Inspector General’s list this year, but liquid […]