Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Holtec plans to submit its license transfer application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to acquire the Palisades Power Plant by the end of this year or early 2021, Andrea Sterdis, Holtec’s vice president of regulatory & environmental affairs, said Tuesday. The company announced plans to acquire the Covert, Michigan-based plant from Entergy Corp. for decommissioning […]

Gene Sievers is taking over as manager of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., backfilling a position left vacant after his predecessor was promoted as part of the leadership shuffle that ensued when Morgan Smith retired as head of the outgoing nuclear-weapons production-site prime. Sievers, most recently vice president of the Bechtel […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating FirstEnergy, the Ohio electric utility tied to a bribery scheme that allegedly helped state Rep. Larry Householder become the state’s Speaker of the House in exchange for a bailout of two nuclear plants.   Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations are typically done behind closed doors, but the […]

On Tuesday, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote, the House rewrote and then passed a stopgap spending bill that would freeze budgets for Department of Energy nuclear programs at 2020 levels through Dec. 11. The revised bill sailed through 357-57, with 14 not voting and one voting “present.” All 56 “no” votes, and 13 of those […]

The business dismissed recently for slow progress in building a new underground ventilation system for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant expects to leave the New Mexico project by the end of the month. The parties are working out a financial settlement, said Mark Christensen, owner and president of Christensen Building Group, and […]

Two Department of Energy contractors, Bechtel and Amentum predecessor AECOM, will pay $57.75-million to resolve claims that a joint venture overbilled the government for work at the Hanford Site in Washington, the Department of Justice said late Tuesday. Bechtel and Amentum, the former AECOM Energy & Construction, admit no wrongdoing by their subsidiary Waste Treatment […]

According to a recently declassified report, the National Nuclear Security Administration thinks it will cost some $14.8 billion to build W87-1 warheads for the Ground Based Strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles planned to replace Minuteman III as the land-based leg of the nuclear triad starting around 2030.  That could make W87-1 — a newly manufactured copy […]

A two-university team is offering its services to prospective bidders on a potentially 10-year contract to manage the National Nuclear Security Administration’s two major nuclear-weapons manufacturing sites, but it had not hooked on with any industry partners as of Tuesday, a spokesperson said. “The University of Tennessee System and the Texas A&M University System have […]

Rep. Mike Levin, (D-Calif.) this week filed a five-year, $500m bill to form a spent nuclear fuel research and development program at the Department of Energy. The California congressman has long petitioned to increase oversight of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is in his jurisdiction and in the process of being decommissioned after […]

Sandia National Laboratories was preparing Tuesday to reopen its MO285 office space after deep-cleaning the area after an employee there tested positive for COVID-19, the nuclear-weapons engineering hub said. Only one employee working at MO285 tested positive, the labs network wrote in a statement Monday, when it began the deep cleaning that typically allows work […]

Department of Energy defense nuclear programs would be held at their 2020 budgets through Dec. 11, under a short-term continuing resolution the House of Representatives unveiled Monday. The House Rules Committee approved the parameters of debate for the bill on Monday evening. The House had not scheduled a floor vote at deadline Tuesday, but Democrats […]

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio commission has launched a probe into whether the state’s largest electric utility used ratepayer money to help finance a scheme to elect Ohio Rep. Larry Householder as the state’s house speaker in order to pass a bill that helped bail out two of its subsidiaries. In an order filed […]

Expect the Department of Energy to issue the long-anticipated paramilitary security contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina within the next few months, a federal official said Monday. Michael Budney, the head of the department’s Savannah River Site’s (SRS) operations office, made the assessment during Monday’s online meeting of the Savannah River Site’s […]

Public Comment Period for New Mexico Holtec Site Ends Today The public comment period on Holtec International’s application to build an interim storage facility for spent radioactive waste in southeastern New Mexico will close at the end of the day, despite pleas from critics to wait until the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Originally scheduled […]

A nuclear brain-drain in the military has shown signs of reversing course in the decade-plus since the mistaken delivery of nuclear-armed cruise missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, the head of the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research said Monday. “My sense of it is that that bottomed out,” Brad […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General says two major contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington State don’t always maintain respirators in accordance with government requirements. The report said more attention to respiratory equipment is needed by Jacobs subsidiary, CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co., and Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions. CH2M is responsible […]

The level of coronavirus infections in South Carolina is still high enough to keep the Department of Energy from moving any closer to pre-COVID-19 operations at the Savannah River Site, a senior site official said Monday. The DOE complex next to the Georgia line will probably stay in Phase 1 of the agency’s COVID-19 remobilization […]

The House of Representatives was scheduled to write the rules of debate on Monday for the continuing resolution that will fund the government for the early part of fiscal year 2021, which begins in 10 days. The House had not yet unveiled the text of its bill at deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, […]

The Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories combined picked up less than a handful of new confirmed COVID-19 cases last week, the New Mexico nuke sites reported late last week after the ExchangeMonitor’s weekly deadline. Sandia’s cumulative case count rose to 63 from 60, with all three new cases logged at the lab network’s main […]

The top brass at the Energy Department has decided not to have a potential member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) lead its discussions about communications between the agency and the safety watchdog. In a Sept. 15, letter to the now former DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton, Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes said […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is looking for a group of qualified vendors to compete for orders for nationwide waste treatment services. In a recently published batch of questions and answers, the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center, said it is not issuing an indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract for nationwide treatment services for mixed and […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has endorsed a “Pandemic Response and Recovery Plan” that spells out a strategy for a gradual return to on-site work at its Washington, D.C., headquarters and elsewhere. Since mid-March the DNFSB and its roughly 100-member staff have worked in a “maximum telework posture” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, […]

A congressional appropriator predicted Wednesday there will be short-term continuing resolution passed to keep the Energy Department and other federal agencies running from Oct. 1 into December. “We will not have a budget shutdown,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann said during the virtual National Cleanup Workshop hosted by the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) in cooperation with the […]

The Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office has now taken down nine of the 10 contaminated structures covered by an agreement reached earlier this year on facilities at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California, officials said Wednesday. Demolition of the ninth of the buildings in the current tranche at the Energy Technology Engineering Center was […]

While the coronavirus has delayed some Energy Department nuclear remediation by a few months, completion of key projects is imminent, agency officials said during an online conference Wednesday. “The last time I saw most of you in person was probably in Phoenix” during March for the Waste Management Symposia, DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management […]