Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received six new positive COVID-19 tests for its workers between Oct. 1 and Oct. 7, bringing the site total to 45 so far in the pandemic. In addition, another worker at the DOE Hanford Site in Washington state has tested positive, bringing the total […]

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization will begin preparing borehole sites this year at the South Bruce site in the province of Ontario with plans to begin drilling next spring, according to a recent update to the South Bruce Community Liaison Committee. South Bruce is one of two sites the organization is considering to build a […]

Comments are due Thursday on a request for information notice issued by the Department of Energy on plans to build the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative facility near the Savannah River National Laboratory site in South Carolina. The estimated $45-million facility will be built on about five acres within the campus of the University of South Carolina-Aiken […]

Sister Ardeth Platte, the nun who breached the perimeter of the Y-12 National Security Site in 2010 as part of an anti-nuclear protest, died in her sleep late last week in Washington at age 84, media reported. Platte, by the time of her death a well-known anti-nuclear-weapons protester, served time in jail for her trespassing […]

Personnel at the Pantex Plant will have their dosimetry badges analyzed at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee indefinitely after the Texas assembly facility’s decades-old dosimetry processing equipment finally broke down. Pantex shifted dosimetry processing to Y-12 on a permanent basis at the end of September, and “there are no current plans to restore […]

Joe Franco, the Department of Energy’s deputy manager at the Hanford Site’s Richland Operations Office in Washington state, is leaving the agency to take another job. Tuesday was the “farewell” day at Richland for Franco, Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said during his update Wednesday to the Hanford Advisory Committee. Franco has been a DOE […]

As of this week there have been a total of 175 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said Wednesday during a webcast advisory board meeting. Vance, the Hanford site manager, provided the number in response to a question from a member of […]

A California activist group wants federal money to fund cancer research in communities living near power plants — an effort suggested by the National Academy of Sciences years ago but ultimately dropped by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission due to cost. The petition is organized by the Samuel Lawrence Foundation, a Del Mar, Calif., nonprofit that’s […]

Eletronuclear, Brazil’s state-run utility, gave Westinghouse Electric Company a contract to extend operations by 20 years at the country’s only functioning nuclear power plant. The duo will conduct engineering analyses to prolong the life of the Angra 1 plant to 2044 from 2024. The analyses will be facilitated to maintain the plant’s safety and longevity […]

Voters in Eastham, Massachusetts, the site of the decommissioned Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, voted overwhelmingly in favor of asking Gov. Charlie Baker to amp up security at the plant.  In a local election held Tuesday, over one-fifth of the less-than-5,000 person town agreed to “direct the local government to request that Governor Baker and the […]

The liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina hired 151 new employees with an average age of 37 during fiscal 2020. As a result, the average age of the 2,600-person workforce at Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is 48-years old, Phil Breidenbach, president & project manager of the […]

Hot commissioning of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is underway, the agency said in a Tuesday press release. On Monday afternoon, Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation, the Savannah River Site (SRS) liquid waste contractor, transferred 4,000 gallons of waste from the H Tank Farm to […]

Unhappy with the proposals it has seen to date from the Department of Energy, the New Mexico Environment Department is moving toward dispute resolution to bridge differences over cleanup milestones at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The state is invoking dispute resolution over remediation milestones for 2021 under the parties’ 2016 compliance order on consent. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration should hold a COVID-19-safe virtual meeting to brief New Mexico residents about a planned venting of tritium from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, members of the state’s congressional delegation said Tuesday in a letter to the lab’s local fed. “[W]e strongly urge you to hold an open public information meeting […]

Framatome, a French nuclear reactor company, has opened a brand-new $20 million uranium recovery facility at its 50-year-old fuel manufacturing site in Richland, Washington. The 11,000-square-foot recovery site will recover uranium from the fuel manufacturing process.  Framatome signed multimillion-dollar contracts with the Tennessee Valley Authority earlier this year for work at the Browns Ferry Nuclear […]

A pair of university systems plus just about every major contractor to run the sites in the last decade-plus were among the 49 entities whose representatives toured the Y-12 National Security Site and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, last month as part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s competition to find a new site […]

The Department of Energy said in a Tuesday Federal Register notice that it is withdrawing its designation of Waste Control Specialists in West Texas as its long-term storage site for elemental mercury. The DOE and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality previously granted the necessary approvals for the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) site in Andrews County […]

Citizens of Eastham, Massachusetts, site of the decommissioned Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, will vote today on whether to ask Gov. Charlie Baker to amp up security at the plant.  The plant was shut down by Entergy, its former owner, in May 2019. Holtec International purchased the plant three months later to decommission it. The ballot […]

Two more people at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to late-Monday post on an official Hanford website. In addition, 12 more workers at the Hanford Site are undergoing testing for COVID-19, according to a notice posted on a Hanford website that provides daily updates […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Buffalo District has submitted a proposed plan and launched the public comment period for the further decontamination of the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York. The Corps has already finished the decision-making process for the 10-acre Interim Waste Containment Structure (IWCS), an engineered landfill dating to the […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership’s current eight-year, $2.4-billion contract for management and operation of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is being extended for at least one more year, potentially two. The DOE and Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership agreed Sept. 15 to a one-year option through Sept. 30, 2021, contractor spokesman Donavan […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state needs to be better prepared to cope with additional failure of single-shell tanks holding radioactive wastes, according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General. That is a key takeaway from a report, dated Sept. 30 and recently posted online. If many existing underground tanks fail there […]

As soon as Congress approved it, the Secretary of Energy cleared agency contractors to continue billing the government for paid time off given to workers who cannot do their jobs because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Secretary Dan Brouillette signed the order Oct. 1, allowing all DOE cleanup contractors to continue billing for such costs […]

The story “Teaming Arrangements Taking Shape for Y-12, Pantex Contract Recompete” [Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, Sept. 30, 2020] should have said that the National Nuclear Security Administration must onboard a new management and operations contractor for the Pantex Plant and Y-12 National Security Complex by Oct. 1, 2021.

In the second-to-last week of fiscal year 2020, the National Nuclear Security Administration wrapped up its customer requirements review with the Department of Defense for the W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile warhead, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said. W87-1, the replacement for W78, is arguably the civilian agency’s most ambitious nuclear modernization project of the 21st […]

FirstEnergy Corp. and Energy Harbor can continue lobbying the Ohio legislature while lawmakers decide what to do with a controversial nuclear bail-out bill before it goes into effect in January, a judge ruled Friday, striking down a lawsuit filed by Attorney General David Yost. The judge said a ban on political spending would be a […]