Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Russian Federation on Tuesday appeared to offer a one-year extension of the New START nuclear arms-limitation treaty with the U.S., as long as a politically binding, bilateral warhead freeze is the only condition of such an extension, according to a statement posted online by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  The ministry posted a […]

Comments are due Nov. 2 on a draft solicitation for a new, potentially decades-spanning contract for more than $500 million worth of work at the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project in Moab, Utah, the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management said Monday. The draft request for proposals (RFP) comes after the agency kicked […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration should formalize in April its choice to build a pit-production from the remains of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina an agency official said Friday. That would set the stage for the semiautonomous DOE nuclear weapons agency to approve a formal cost […]

The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management announced Thursday it has resumed operation of the Tank-Closure Cesium Removal module following an extended maintenance outage that started in summer 2019 after when an aging transfer pump stopped working.  The pump, used to prepare salt waste inside Tank 10 for cesium removal, was replaced this past […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will review an application from Virginia Electric and Power Company (Dominion) to extend its license at the Virginia-based North Anna Power Station Units 1 and 2. Dominion’s license has already been extended once, in March 2003, with Unit 1 currently licensed to operate through April 2038, and Unit 2 through August […]

South Carolina State University President James Clark said Friday his institution is part of a team of colleges vying to run the Energy Department’s Savannah River National Laboratory. The historically black public university in Orangeburg, S.C., is a member of a team with Clemson, the University of South Carolina, Georgia Tech and the University of […]

The Department of Energy is giving potential bidders until Dec. 1 to respond to a final request for proposals for a new five-year infrastructure support services contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) issued the request for proposals (RFP) notice Tuesday. The DOE nuclear cleanup branch said in […]

Los Angeles-based AECOM, which earlier this year sold off its government contracting business for nuclear cleanup, might be close to another nuclear-related spinoff, a source said Wednesday. The multinational engineering, design and construction company could divest its energy business, possibly within days, the source said, citing industry rumors and AECOM’s publicly-stated intent to sell certain […]

Glovebox component vendor Central Research Laboratories, Red Wing, Minn., again popped up in connection with a glovebox breach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility, this time after a close call involving a plutonium machining operator.  On Sept. 23, an “ergonomic” glovebox glove assembly provided by Central Research Laboratories unexpectedly disconnected from the […]

While some work at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, contract procurement has hardly missed a beat, officials told an online industry conference this week. Thus far in 2020 there have been “almost no drop offs [and] ironically enough, almost some acceleration” in contract solicitations and […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff plan to combine the “Part 61” low-level radioactive waste rulemaking and the Greater-Than-Class C rulemaking for efficiency, a senior official said Wednesday. The highly anticipated NRC report will be released to the public by the end of November, Patricia Holahan, director of the NRC’s Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste […]

Exelon Corp. is considering selling its nuclear plants, Bloomberg reports.  The business wire reported Monday afternoon that sources close to the energy company say it’s considering selling some of its non-utility assets, but a final decision hasn’t been made. “As we most recently communicated on our second quarter earnings call, we regularly review our corporate […]

COVID-19 has made remote work much more common for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, and could alter work practices even after the pandemic recedes, the office’s top career official said Tuesday. Even with some people return to cleanup sites across the country, at EM headquarters in Washington, D.C., there is still only […]

The Department of Energy’s top brass joined the governor of Tennessee, congressmen and local dignitaries Tuesday at the Oak Ridge Site to celebrate taking down contaminated facilities at what was originally the K-25 uranium enrichment complex, now the East Tennessee Technology Park. “The work that this entailed is simply staggering,” Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s enterprise-wide procurement honcho predicted a competition to pick a new management contractor for the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security Complex would conclude in time to replace the incumbent by Oct. 1, 2021, and without any protest. “We don’t get protested,” Bob Raines, the agency’s associate administrator for acquisition […]

The Donald Trump administration’s lead nuclear negotiator on Tuesday called on the arms control community to publicly back the White House’s drive to condition an indeterminate extension of the New START treaty with Russia on a verifiable freeze in deployment of all nuclear warheads, even those not covered by the bilateral agreement. “I think it’s […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a meeting Thursday addressing licensing issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Commissioners will discuss work hours, security inspection exemptions and other pandemic-related topics.  On March 30, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) made work-hour exceptions, allowing plant operators to work up to 86 hours in a work week, up from […]

Bill Moore, a geologist with more than 25 years of experience in the environmental cleanup business, is the new executive director for the Tennessee-based Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association. Bob Eby, the organization’s board president, announced Moore’s appointment Tuesday during the trade group’s first virtual 2020 Business Opportunities and Technical Conference. Moore has worked […]

The No. 2 manager at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office will keynote a Tennessee-based organization’s virtual Business Opportunities Conference this morning. Todd Shrader, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, addresses the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association’s gathering at about 10:30 a.m. Eastern time. Shrader is […]

A story in Monday’s Weapons Complex Morning Briefing (“Nun Who Breached Y-12 Perimeter Dies at 84”) should have said that SOC is the physical security provider under Consolidated Nuclear Security’s contract to manage the Pantex Plant and the Y-12 National Security Complex.

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state can use education along with the specter of financial loss in pushing ethical standards for contractors, the site’s local fed said recently.  The DOE has mandated ethics programs for major contractors and this effort is “very similar to a safety program” in that it’s designed to […]

Kentucky-based Swift & Staley appears to be staying on another 22 months as the infrastructure support services contractor at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky. The latest summary of major contracts from DOE, dated last Friday, shows Swift & Staley’s term as the services provider at the former gaseous diffusion plant site has […]

After weeks of reporting that Washington and Moscow might be close to a follow-on deal to or an extension of the landmark New START treaty, President Donald Trump’s lead arms-control negotiator is scheduled for a public talk today about China’s nuclear arsenal. Unless the Trump administration and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, agree to extend […]

Republican Illinois State Rep. Tom Demmer, determined to save Exelon’s Byron Generating Station from closure, launched a website last week to gin up support for state subsidies to stop the plant from closing next fall.  Exelon announced plans to close the Byron and Dresden Generating Stations in late August, calling them “uneconomic” and plagued by […]

The Sandia National Laboratories confirmed nine new cases of COVID-19 among its workforce last week, raising the lab network’s total since the start of the outbreak to 86 cases. As of Friday, Sandia Albuquerque had nine new cases while Sandia California, near the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, had two new cases, a Sandia spokesperson said. […]