Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Bruce Blair, the missileer turned nonproliferation scholar and activist, died Sunday following a sudden illness, Global Zero, the advocacy organization he co-founded in 2007, announced Monday.  The Global Zero statement did not specify the cause of death, nor identify any survivors for Blair — a prolific writer and advocate for nuclear arms-minimization who often warned […]

The Energy Department plans to extend a sole-source contract with Atkins for research on vitrification at the Waste Treatment Plant being built at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The DOE Office of River Protection at Hanford said in July 14 procurement notice it intends to keep using the SNC-Lavalin Group subsidiary for testing of […]

The House and Senate are set for a bicameral conference debate about federal nuclear weapons policy, after the lower chamber on Monday approved legislative language that would prohibit nuclear tests and put the secretary of energy on the Nuclear Weapons Council. Both provisions were amendments to the House’s annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which […]

The congressman representing the district surrounding the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state is facing off with five challengers in an Aug. 4 primary for which voting by mail has already started. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) has represented the 4th Congressional District in central Washington since January 2015. As a member of House Appropriations […]

Air Force Brig. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser has joined the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as principal assistant deputy administrator for military application in the Office of Defense Programs, where she will oversee weapons modernization and testing, and serve as the military’s point of contact for these civilian-run programs. Huser will run “stockpile management activities, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday said it would give stakeholders another three months to comment on a potential update to rules for disposal of very low-level radioactive waste. The new deadline to submit input on the proposed interpretive rule is Oct. 21, according to a tweet from the federal agency. The previous deadline had […]

The Energy Department has agreed to a contract extension lasting as long as two years for the incumbent remediation vendor at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced Monday it will exercise a one-year extension to keep URS/CH2M Hill Oak Ridge (UCOR) on the job thorough July 2021. That […]

After some logistical and regulatory road bumps, an Atlanta-area small business has shipped nearly a quarter-million respirator masks to U.S. nuclear weapons sites, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). “All 225,000 masks have been shipped and are in transit to their respective NNSA facilities,” a spokesperson for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on Friday submitted a long list of concerns about a proposed Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule interpretation that could make it easier to ship “very low-level” radioactive waste to landfills. “The NRC’s proposed interpretive rule could create administrative, enforcement, and compliance challenges for both regulators and the regulated community,” […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week finalized environmental paperwork that completes a court-ordered re-review of earthquake risks at the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. — but environmental groups with a live lawsuit over the plan are complaining that the agency’s second look was not adequate. The finalized supplement analysis, published July […]

A Kentucky man in 2015 illegally managed transport and disposal of technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material (TENORM) waste, a federal grand jury charged on Thursday. Cory David Hoskins, of West Liberty, Ky., faces a total of 27 criminal counts: five for fraud and the remainder for violation of hazardous materials law and regulations. Hoskins […]

The Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state confirmed three additional novel coronavirus 2019 infections over the weekend, with the latest reported Sunday. The new cases were disclosed on DOE’s website for Hanford. They bring the total COVID-19 cases at the former plutonium production complex to 31, based on an informal count. The Hanford Site […]

A Texas congressman wants to grant the Energy Department authority to dispose of certain foreign-generated radioactive material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Rep. Pete Olson (R) is proposing an amendment to the House of Representatives’ fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to allow disposal of americium-241 in the WIPP […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to host another virtual job fair, this time on July 22. The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency set a goal of hiring 130 people this summer, specifically in Albuquerque, N.M.; Amarillo, Texas; Kansas City, Mo.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Livermore, Calif.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Aiken, S.C., and Washington, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will soon consider alternatives to breaking down nuclear-weapon cores for disposal at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as part of a plan to eliminate 34 metric tons of excess plutonium, an agency official said this week. Dilute and dispose, officially the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program, involves […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water development spending plan for fiscal 2021 sustains the prohibition on Energy Department sales or barter of government-controlled uranium to help pay for remediation at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. “The Committee continues to reject any attempt to barter, transfer, or sell uranium to pay for Portsmouth cleanup costs,” […]

Legislation advanced out of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday sets the stage for the Department of Energy to proceed with its plan for long-term storage of elemental mercury at a privately owned facility in Texas. The 2021 energy and water appropriations bill includes language saying DOE can start accepting fees from businesses, such as […]

The Department of Energy remains in the early stages of studying potential options for recycling used nuclear power plant fuel, Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal said Wednesday. “To look at the option of recycling and what falls under that umbrella, is something that my team has started to do,” Baranwal said during a […]

It will take at least until 2021 before the University of Washington can reopen a building contaminated with cesium-137 by a 2019 radiological source-removal gone wrong — and some of the facility might have to be torn down and rebuilt, a university official said Wednesday. “The current timeline has remediation going basically to the end […]

The members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted 3-0 Wednesday to reduce a charge for disposal of radioactive waste at a state-owned facility operated by Waste Control Specialists. With little discussion during the teleconference, the three commissioners said they had no major objections to the company’s requests to cut the curie inventory charge […]

The secretary of energy should get more control over the agency’s nuclear weapons programs, not less, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Tuesday. “[W]e should be strengthening the secretary of energy’s role in managing the nuclear security mission, because [the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)] seems to be going from quasi-independent […]

Two workers at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state informed management Tuesday they have tested positive for COVID-19. The latest infections were cited on an Energy Department website for the nuclear cleanup facility. Anecdotal information suggests there have now been 27 cases at Hanford since the pandemic began. Four of those have been […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will prepare an updated technical review for the Saltstone Disposal Facility at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Energy Department requested the technical review of the 2020 Saltstone Disposal Facility performance assessment in keeping with a provision of the 2005 National Defense Authorization Act, according to the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is again considering updating rule language on financial assurance for decommissioning of nuclear power plants and other facilities to strip out any reference to credit ratings. The update is required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, according to a June 26 memo from NRC Executive Director […]

With COVID-19 cases on the rise nationwide and Washington, D.C.-area school systems wondering whether they’ll reopen for in-person classes in the fall, the Department of Energy will no longer require most employees to return to their offices in the next phase of the agency’s reopening plan. Most of DOE’s 7,000 federal employees in the region, […]

The Energy Department is taking public comment through Aug. 14 on options for management of deteriorating structures at the B Plant complex at the Hanford Site in Washington state. B Plant is located in the 200 East Area of the 580-square-mile Hanford Site. From the 1940s until 1952, the complex was used for the chemical […]

It is ultimately up to Congress to decide whether it wants the federal government to move ahead with establishing a repository for nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said Tuesday. During an oversight hearing before the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, Brouillette said the Trump administration is focused […]