Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy unveiled in a Tuesday memorandum a new initiative focused on the use of nuclear power in space. Within 30 days of the memorandum, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will create a program to develop a mid-power space reactor with a lunar fission surface power […]

In a Sunday editorial, the Tri-City Herald newspaper in Richland, Wash., blasted the Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 request that would cut by more than $390-million the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup budget for the Hanford Site. While Hanford would still receive around $2.9 billion, more than a third of the budget for the DOE […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued two new final rules under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) meant to streamline environmental review during its licensing processes. The first rule, affirmed on Monday by the Commission, creates a new generic environmental impact statement framework for new reactor technology. NRC said the new setup uses “a technology-neutral […]

United States–Iran nuclear negotiations have hit a stalemate over a fundamental dispute on uranium enrichment limits, major news outlets reported this week, underscoring the gap between nonproliferation demands and Tehran’s red lines. The U.S. proposed a sweeping restriction that would require Iran to halt uranium enrichment for up to 20 years and relinquish its existing […]

The Department of Energy wants $10 million to fund the standalone Office of Fusion in fiscal 2027, according to DOE’s recent budget justification document. DOE said the $10 million request will support the office by providing funding for personnel, travel, advisory and start up assistance. The Office of Fusion will lead DOE in advancing “a […]

Solid rocket motors for the first five Air Force flight tests of the Northrop Grumman LGM-35A Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) are in construction, the company said on Monday. “Every propulsive element of the Sentinel missile has been prototyped and tested,” according to the company press release. “Northrop Grumman has assembled the first three-stage […]

A South Carolina nuclear advisory panel heard Monday that various feasibility tasks are underway to help a state-owned electric utility decide whether a $2.7 billion investment will be made to complete two partially built nuclear reactors.  The Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station has three units, with only one currently active. The other two were […]

A South Carolina woman pleaded guilty last week to stealing money from her deceased relative’s pension benefits earned from working at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.  On April 9, the Department of Justice announced Effie Mae Youmans, 71, of Columbia, admitted to theft of public money by wrongly collecting someone else’s pension benefits. […]

EnergySolutions said Monday on LinkedIn it has appointed a familiar face, Andrew Drom, as its new senior vice president for its Federal Support business unit. Although he just joined the Salt Lake City-based company April 6, this is Drom’s second tour of duty with EnergySolutions. He served in a couple of different international management positions […]

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), ranking member of the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, on April 8 unveiled a $19.2 million Department of Energy award to support a new nuclear safety training and workforce development program. Kaptur spoke of the initiative, led by the University of Toledo, during a visit to the Davis-Besse Nuclear […]

A wargame conducted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies suggested that a stand-in, penetrating force of the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider stealth bomber for strategic attack were key to blunting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, is advising the Air Force to buy […]

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will testify on the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2027 budget request Wednesday in front of the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee. The hearing will take place at 2 p.m. Eastern time in the Rayburn House Office Building, room 2359. The livestream can be accessed here. This hearing comes after […]

Charles Nakhleh became the new deputy director for weapons at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico effective April 1, lab management announced recently. Nakhleh assumes the post following the March 31 retirement of Robert Webster, who finished up a 40-year career with the nuclear security enterprise, according to a recent […]

Here are events related to nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking:  APRIL: 13: Meeting: The South Carolina Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council meets starting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time in Columbia, S.C.  16: Meeting (hybrid): The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission meets starting at 10 a.m.Central Time at the Texas State Capitol […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) removed all of the cesium-137 irradiators in South Carolina as part of the Cesium Irradiator Replacement Project, the agency said last week. This makes South Carolina the 13th U.S. state, or U.S. territory, to clear high-risk cesium-137 radioactive material from the region. The other states as of yet are: […]

The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said last week it is preparing a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for producing the fissile cores of the nation’s nuclear weapons, or plutonium pit production. As part of the environmental review, required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), NNSA must open the review […]

The Department of Energy has completed construction of its National Research Innovation Center’s Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) test bed, located at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, the agency said last week. DOME is a first-of-a-kind facility that will allow private nuclear companies to test their microreactor technologies. The test bed facility serves to accelerate development, […]

The Department of Energy said Wednesday it has deposited its first big batch of glass logs, made from liquid radioactive tank waste, at the Hanford Site’s Integrated Disposal Facility at Richland, Wash. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and contractor Central Plateau Cleanup said in a press release that the Integrated Disposal Facility received the first […]

New York-based NANO Nuclear has filed a construction permit application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its KRONOS microreactor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Ill. The Grainger College of Engineering at the university was the entity that formally submitted the application, NANO Nuclear said in an April 2 press release. The application […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. could encounter more traffic in the coming days as perhaps 200,000 people roll into the area for the annual Masters Golf Tournament in neighboring Augusta, Ga. Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, is roughly 23 miles or a 35-minute car ride […]

The Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said Wednesday it picked Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana as potential locations for nuclear microreactors. The decision comes under the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program (ANPI), a partnership between the Air Force and DIU to deploy “advanced, […]

The House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water development and related agencies scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, April 15 to review the Department of Energy’s budget request for fiscal 2027. This hearing comes after the White House issued a budget request for fiscal 2027 that would give $32.8 billion to the DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear […]

The Los Alamos Study Group and Nuclear Watch New Mexico published separate statements this week criticizing the Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 request for an increase in funding plutonium pit production and decrease to nonproliferation and non-weapons science programs. “Throughout this budget it is global dominance, not global cooperation, that is the stated theme. U.S. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff this week recommended NRC issue a construction permit allowing the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a small modular reactor (SMR) at the Clinch River site in Oak Ridge, Tenn. In the final supplemental environmental impact statement, published Monday in the Federal Register, NRC staff said it made the recommendation to […]

The Department of Energy approved Antares Nuclear’s documented safety analysis for its test reactor, Mark-0, under DOE’s reactor pilot program, the company said on Monday. The documented safety analysis marks the acceptance of Antares’s final design for its Mark-0 reactor. The company now enters the DOE’s readiness review process, which is the final phase of […]

President Donald Trump said on social media Tuesday evening a two-week ceasefire was negotiated between the United States and Iran to finalize an agreement between the two parties. “Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being […]