Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

Cleaning up the former plutonium production complex at the Hanford Site in Washington state could be even more costly and take longer than expected, a Department of Energy official said Wednesday during a virtual meeting. The forecast is from DOE’s ninth and latest revision of the River Protection Project System Plan. Brian Harkins, the agency’s […]

On Wednesday, as Congress prepared for final negotiations on a must-pass bill that could increase the Pentagon’s say over civilian nuclear-weapons programs, the former head of those programs said the defense department needs less, not more, sway over such matters. The Pentagon and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Security Administration (NNSA), a semi […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will approve the sale of the NYC-area Indian Point power plant from Entergy Corp. to Holtec Decommissioning International. The NRC is expected to issue an order Monday allowing Entergy to transfer the plant’s license to the New Jersey-based decommissioning company for dismantling, according to NRC documents.  Entergy agreed in February 2019 […]

The congressman representing the Hanford Site has tested positive for COVID-19, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant uncovered 20 more cases among its workforce, and someone at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has died from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), whose district includes the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, announced […]

One of the heads of the advisory group overseeing the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee power plant wants to retract the group’s endorsement to send the plant’s spent fuel to an interim storage facility.  Vice Chair Lissa Weinmann doesn’t believe a letter signed in 2015 by the board’s former chair is representative of the current […]

A federal magistrate judge has set a status conference Dec. 8 to discuss discovery issues in a lawsuit brought by Southern Ohio residents against current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers set the conference to discuss issues in the lawsuit brought in May […]

The Department of Energy’s 2020 groundwater sampling goals for the Hanford Site in Washington state are going to miss their target largely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, an agency official said Tuesday. Out of the 2,500 or so groundwater samples normally taken at the former plutonium production complex in the course of a year, DOE […]

The Government Accountability Office took a victory lap for a series of investigations it made into the now-cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., saying the move saved some $13 billion. The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility was initially forecast to cost $4.8 billion, but “[i]n response to […]

The Navy is happy to share knowledge about weapons with the Air Force, so long as it does not actually have to share a nuclear weapon with the Air Force, the sea service’s director for strategic systems programs said Tuesday. “I think a couple years ago, commonality started to put us on a path where […]

Deep Isolation has finished its $20 million Series A fundraising efforts, the Berkeley, California company announced Tuesday. This capital investment venture has been underway since January. That money is intended to help line up a targeted $50 million worth of sales and contracts. On top of this amount, Deep Isolation has lined up roughly $5 […]

FirstEnergy Corp. isn’t in compliance with New York Stock Exchange listing requirements, the company said in a press statement Tuesday.  The NYSE sent a notice to FirstEnergy on Tuesday after the company failed to file its required 10-Q form for the quarter ending Sept. 30 on time. The utility missed its original deadline of Nov. […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill that would require the Department of Energy secretary to present an annual report on the U.S. inventory of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Starting in January 2022, the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020 (ANIA) would require DOE to report: how much money the […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 25 shipments of transuranic waste during October, which is marginally better than the 21 shipments during the same month in 2019. That is according to DOE’s public database for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), which also shows shipments for this pandemic-hobbled year […]

When the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear reactor reactivates from a refueling outage that started Oct. 26, it will begin producing tritium for nuclear weapons for the first time, a National Nuclear Security Administration spokesperson said Monday. The specialized rods will start producing yield-boosting gas for nuclear weapons during Watts Bar Unit […]

With more than 333,000 ballots cast in California’s 25th congressional district, incumbent Mike Garcia (R) is clinging to a lead of 104 votes over Christy Smith (D) as of Monday, according to reports from CNN and other news outlets. About 99% of the ballots have been counted, according to the CNN website. Garcia, a former […]

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization has been charged by the federal government to develop a plan for dealing with the country’s supply of low- and intermediate-level waste. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is a non-profit established in 2002 in accordance with Canada’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act to find a solution for the permanent storage […]

In what could be a boon to submarine subcontractors and the broader nuclear-naval industry, the Navy is looking at buying components for Columbia-class submarines, especially boats that will follow the two already under contract, a little earlier, the head of naval reactors said Monday. “We’re looking at what we can do to further de-risk Columbia […]

FBI agents were seen removing boxes from the home of the head of Ohio’s utilities regulator on Monday, according to The Columbus Dispatch, although it’s unclear what they were looking for. The chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), Sam Randazzo, has connections with FirstEnergy, an electric utility tied to a $60-million nuclear-bailout […]

An online briefing on a potential $100-million technical services contract at the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico drew about 60 people last week as prospective bidders prepare for the Dec. 14 application deadline. Incumbent North Wind Group, which has a $44-million contract that began in November 2015 and could run until […]

Typical lumpiness in contracts with utilities held uranium fuel-broker and technology developer Centrus Corp. to a net loss in the third quarter of 2020, but the company expects to close out the year with a revenue bang, CEO Daniel Poneman told investors Friday. Also, Poneman said, construction of the company’s new, Department of Energy-funded uranium-enrichment […]