Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Monday-Thursday: The American Nuclear Society will hold a four-day virtual winter meeting from Monday to Thursday this week. Participants can register here.  Wednesday:  Nuclear Deterrence Forum with Lt. Gen Frank Klotz, former administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration. Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Transforming National Security Nuclear Policy For A New Era. Ploughshares Fund. Thursday: Members […]

Steve Winberg was appointed acting under secretary of energy, replacing Mark Menezes who was elevated to deputy secretary according to a Dear Colleagues letter circulated late last week by Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. Winberg was most recently the assistant secretary for fossil energy: a direct report to the undersecretary of energy.  Also, Brouillette wrote, […]

The state of New Mexico last week was noncommittal about when it might approve a pair of permits the Los Alamos National Laboratory needs to vent tritium gas into the atmosphere. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the venting, but the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) had not as of Thursday decided when it […]

Seven more workers informed management at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state on Saturday they have tested positive for COVID-19. The latest confirmed coronavirus infections were reported in a Saturday afternoon post on Hanford’s emergency operations website, which is run by site services contractor Mission Support Alliance. That brings the confirmed total […]

The Ohio legislature, which began its lame duck session Monday, held hearings on two of the four bills proposed to repeal the effects of a controversial nuclear bailout law at the center of a corruption scandal involving the state House’s former speaker.  There are four bills pending in the Ohio legislature that would roll back […]

Fluor Corp., the financially troubled, Dallas-based Department of Energy contractor, continued to narrow its losses from continuing operations in the second quarter and first six months of 2020, the company said in a long-delayed second-quarter earnings report. Fluor’s second-quarter loss from continuing operations was about $20 million, an improvement from a loss of more than […]

About 30 people participated in a virtual pre-proposal conference Oct. 28 on the Department of Energy’s planned new infrastructure services contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. That is according to a registration list published recently by the DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center for the event. The business center also posted slides and a […]

The same day the National Nuclear Security Administration requested proposals for a potentially decades-long contract to run two of its three major nuclear weapons production sites, Senate appropriators asked why there is so little competition for such contracts at the Department of Energy. The semiautonomous DOE weapons agency released the final solicitation Tuesday, the same […]

With the Department of Energy and other federal agencies now working under a continuing budget resolution keeping spending at 2020 levels, the Senate Appropriations Committee finally released its fiscal 2021 budget proposal Tuesday that would keep nuclear cleanup at the 2020 level of nearly $7.5 billion. The Senate Appropriations’ Energy and Water Development bill would […]

Former National Nuclear Security Administration No. 2 Madelyn Creedon is part of President Elect Joe Biden’s (D) transition team, the Biden camp announced Wednesday.  Creedon is one of 19 people on Biden’s Department of Energy beachhead team, which is led by Arun Majumdar: currently a professor at Stanford University’s department of mechanical engineering in California, […]

The contractor for the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. fixed a problem pump flagged by a federal watchdog, and the newly opened facility has now received 86,000 gallons of waste from the site’s H Tank Farm in its first month of radioactive operations, according to the Department of […]

Lame-duck budget negotiations are officially underway, and the Senate’s opening gambit for the National Nuclear Security Administration was to give the agency the roughly $20 billion it sought for 2021: over $1 billion more than what the House of Representatives recommended. That’s according to a bill and an accompanying report the Senate Armed Services Committee […]

In a budget bill released Tuesday, Senate appropriators agreed with their House colleagues that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should get about $850 million in fiscal year 2021, with $27.5 million for a non-Yucca-Mountain consolidated nuclear-waste storage facility. The proposal released Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee recommends the requested $849.9 million for the Nuclear Regulatory […]

Leidos-led Mission Support Alliance, the landlord services provider at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, awarded a $13-million subcontract for local firm Fowler General Construction to build a new water treatment plant. The new facility would replace the current 1940s vintage plant and automate water services and support treatment of tank waste […]

The Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory has a new directory, John Wagner, who is being promoted from his current post as associate director for nuclear science and technology. Wagner has been Idaho National Laboratory’s associate director since 2017. Battelle Energy Alliance, the lab prime, announced his elevation to the top job last week. Battelle […]

With the presidential election in the rearview and Congress preparing for a lameduck session that will include budget negotiations, Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) asked energy and water appropriations leaders not to include money for Yucca Mountain in any 2021 funding bills. “The Yucca Mountain site is both a geologically and […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette kept close tabs on then-National Nuclear Security Administration boss Lisa Gordon-Hagerty for months, sending chaperones to her meetings with Congress and monitoring her personal calendar before abruptly demanding her resignation last week, a source told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. It was a dramatic end to a year of strife between […]

The Department of Energy’s manager for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has yet to reply to a $32-million breach of contract suit filed late last month by a joint venture which had been hired to build a major new underground ventilation system. Critical Applications Alliance, a venture jointly owned by Christensen Building […]

Mark Gilbertson, a longtime Department of Energy manager, is the new principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and policy affairs for nuclear cleanup. Gilbertson takes over the post vacated through the Oct. 30 retirement of Elizabeth “Betsy” Connell at the Office of Environmental Management (EM). His appointment was reflected in both an updated organization chart […]

More top FirstEnergy executives are leaving the company, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its top lawyer. FirstEnergy’s Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Robert Reffner was “separated” from the company Nov. 8, according to an 8-K filing, along with Ebony Yeboah-Amankwah, vice president, general counsel and chief […]

After 4 p.m. Pacific Time Monday, managers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state were informed that six more employees have tested positive for the coronavirus. News of the latest surge of COVID-19 cases at Hanford was posted on the DOE emergency operations website for the former plutonium production complex. This pushes […]

In addition to major national news outlets declaring that former Vice President Joe Biden (D) is president-elect, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump (R), pending any recounts and legal appeals, there were other election updates over the weekend that potentially affect the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex. In Nevada’s 3rd congressional district, first-term incumbent Rep. […]

Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the ExchangeMonitor staff is tracking this week. Monday: Today at 2 p.m. Eastern Time is the deadline to register for an online proposal conference on a new technical assistance contract potentially worth $100 million at the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico. The […]

Late Friday there was word of seven additional employees at the Department of Energy headquarters at Washington, D.C., testing positive for the coronavirus and four more positive cases across the country at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette talked about the spate of COVID-19 cases at the Forrestal Building in […]

The Department of Energy is pushing back against the narrative that Lisa Gordon-Hagerty was forced out of her job as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration by Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette.  Gordon-Hagerty abruptly resigned Friday after more than two-and-a-half years in the top spot at DOE’s semi-autonomous nuclear-weapons agency. Her resignation letter, reportedly […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission slapped a $900,000 fine on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee, issuing five violations related to a “substantial safety culture issue” at the plant during the fall of 2015 and early 2016. The Tennessee Valley Authority uses Watts Bar Unit 1 to produce tritium for U.S. nuclear […]