Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The Department of Energy’s manager for the Hanford Site declined Wednesday to say how many employees have tested positive for the coronavirus so far this year at the former plutonium production complex in Washington state. “I report those numbers through headquarters now, and there is a more formal reporting process at the headquarters level,” in […]

The coronavirus pandemic pushed a choice between two competing defense-uranium enrichment technologies to January from December, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Wednesday. It’s the second time this year the agency has delayed the day of reckoning between the AC100 technology that Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., started developing around 2012, and a smaller-scale enrichment […]

Fluor, Irving, Texas, reported a dip in total revenue for the 2020 third quarter, even as its government sector enjoyed higher profits in the three months ended Sept. 30. Perhaps most significantly about the earnings press release issued Thursday morning is that it marks a sort of return to normalcy for the company, which has […]

A little over a month after the secretary of energy demanded her resignation as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Donald Trump administration welcomed Lisa Gordon-Hagerty back into the fold, appointing her to a Pentagon advisory board. The Department of Defense announced Wednesday that Gordon-Hagerty will join its Defense Policy Board, potentially giving […]

The story “Authorization Bill With Requested NNSA Budget, Partial Restoration for EM, Expected to Pass Congress This Week; Veto Threat Looms” (Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, Dec. 07, 2020) should have said that, under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, if the Nuclear Weapons Council determines the secretary of energy’s proposed budget for the NNSA is […]

Concerns over Holtec’s ability to finance the decommissioning of the Palisades nuclear plant, currently owned by Entergy Corp., rang loud at a public meeting held Tuesday afternoon to discuss the two companies’ request to swap ownership of the plant.  Holtec plans to submit the application in December. The plant is scheduled to operate into 2022. […]

The House of Representatives approved the final version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act with a veto-proof margin Tuesday evening, sending the bill and its new nuclear waste and weapons policies to the Senate. The House passed the bill 300-135 , with every member voting. Among other things, the measure would require the Department […]

The advisory board to the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state meets today at 9 a.m. Pacific Time and will hear updates on Tri-Party Agreement cleanup plans. Brian Vance, manager of DOE’s Richland Operations Office and Office of River Protection at the former plutonium production facility, is among the speakers scheduled to address […]

The U.S. and Slovenia, still weighing construction of its second civilian nuclear reactor, signed a memorandum of understanding concerning strategic civilian nuclear cooperation, the State Department announced Tuesday. The memorandum will “strengthen and expand strategic ties between the United States and a partner country by providing a framework for cooperation on civil nuclear issues and […]

NextEra Energy’s application to extend its license at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant Units 1 and 2 has been made publicly available on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website.  “The NRC staff is reviewing the application to determine if it has sufficient information to complete the agency’s extensive safety and environmental reviews,” the commission said in […]

Bid proposals for the new Infrastructure Support Services Contract at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio are due by 4 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday. Portsmouth Mission Alliance, a team made up of an affiliate of Idaho-based North Wind Group and Swift & Staley, holds the current $117-million business that began in March 2016 […]