Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The venture that manages the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico will have until Dec. 21 to reply to a lawsuit brought last month by the construction contractor it fired this summer after slower-than-anticipated progress on a major new underground ventilation system. The motion for an extension, filed by Nuclear Waste […]

In a recent Federal Register notice, the Department of Energy announced its decision to start groundwater remediation in Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif. The DOE said its preferred alternative for most of the area combines treatment and monitored natural attenuation.  The DOE said in its Nov. 10 record […]

The Department of Energy’s enforcement branch has proposed a $580,700 civil penalty against the cleanup contractor at the Idaho National Laboratory in connection with an April 2018 episode where four drums of radioactive sludge overheated and blew off their lids. In a letter dated Nov. 20, Kevin Dressman who directs the enforcement office for DOE’s […]

With more than 337,000 votes in and “only a few remaining ballots to be counted” in California’s 25th congressional district, incumbent Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) claimed late Friday he has won by a few hundred votes over challenger Christy Smith (D), who called the declaration premature. “After a long tough fight, I am proud to […]

An F-35A traveling at supersonic speeds successfully dropped a mock B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb from an internal compartment over the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday. The test took place in August in an F-35A Lightning II, according to a press release from the semi autonomous Department of Energy […]

Dallas-based Jacobs, a major Department of Energy contractor, enjoyed revenue growth for both its fourth quarter and the entire fiscal 2020, which ended Oct. 2, the company said Tuesday. Quarterly revenue came in at $3.5 billion slightly up from the $3.4 billion taken in during the same period a year ago. For the year the […]

Sam Randazzo, the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, resigned Friday after his home was raided earlier in the week by the FBI.  His resignation comes a day after FirstEnergy Corp., the energy utility at the center of one of the largest public corruption scandals in Ohio history, expressed concern in a Securities […]

Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the ExchangeMonitor staff is tracking this week. Because many offices will be closed after Wednesday for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, the Monitor has also included some events scheduled for next week. November 24 – Jacobs fourth quarter earnings call. Corporate leadership scheduled to brief […]

Even with the Department of Energy missing its groundwater sampling targets for 2020, officials with both the Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are satisfied with catchup efforts, officials said Friday. “Under the circumstances, we think what USDOE doing is OK,” Washington Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury said in an email, […]

Geoffrey Beausoleil will retire in April as the local federal official for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s production office, which oversees the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, he said in an email. Separately, a senior DOE official tweeted Friday that Steve Erhart, a former policy […]

The chair of the House Armed Services Committee had bitter medicine in a big spoon for disarmament advocates Wednesday: getting rid of nuclear weapons is a losing message that may have cost Democrats a chance to slow down procurement of next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. “We’re losing this argument because we lost seats in the […]