Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Defense would get close to its requested funding for most strategic nuclear weapons programs in fiscal 2021, under a spending bill approved on a party-line vote Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The bill passed 30-22 with no Republican support. Nobody offered amendments that would affect nuclear weapons funding during the four-hour […]

Bids for the Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project contract are due July 28. An article in the July 6 Weapons Monitor Morning Briefing incorrectly reported the bids were due in June. Questions about the final RFP were due into the Energy Department that month.

A coalition of 60 advocacy groups is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to freeze the comment period on the draft environmental impact statement for a planned spent nuclear fuel storage facility in West Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proceeding should be suspended until the end of the federal public health emergency for novel […]

Two more employees at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state have tested positive for COVID-19 since Friday. The most recent positive test for the coronavirus was reported Monday on a DOE Hanford website. The notice said the employee was last at their normal Hanford worksite on June 5. The same website posted notice […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has not missed a single milestone in the six months since the first case of COVID-19 was recorded on U.S. shores and four months since the World Health Organization declared the disease a pandemic, the agency’s leader said Monday. “Faced with the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, […]

On a 30-21 vote, the House Appropriations Committee on Monday approved a 2021 budget of about $18 billion for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as part of a spending bill now awaiting debate on the House floor. The majority Democrats voted in favor of the measure, while Republicans on the committee […]

Remediation of the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina would be funded at about $1.5 billion for fiscal 2021 under legislation passed out of the House Appropriations Committee on a 30-21 vote Monday. That amount would be about $83 million more than the $1.46 billion enacted by Congress for fiscal 2020, which ends […]

Failure to provide funding for the Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada signals a lack of leadership in Congress and at the White House toward finally resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste, Representative Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said during a budget markup Monday. The House Appropriations Committee voted 30-21 in favor […]

A small plane crashed Sunday afternoon at the base of Rattlesnake Mountain on property owned by the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. There were no injuries. The plane’s two occupants said they were flying to view the elk herd in the area, according to a Facebook post from the Benton County Sheriff’s Office. […]

The West Valley Demonstration Project in New York has entered the next phase of the Energy Department’s operational restart program after a period of reduced operations due to COVID-19, an agency spokesperson said by email Monday. Under Phase 2, which the upstate facility reached last Wednesday, on-site staffing levels will be about 60% of the […]

The House Appropriations Committee on Sunday expressed skepticism about the Department of Energy’s approach to management of nuclear waste, even as it seems likely to approve the funding request for the upcoming budget year. In the fiscal 2021 energy and water development bill released last week, the Democrat-led panel met the department’s $27.5 million request: […]

The upcoming decommissioning of the Crystal River nuclear power plant needs more government oversight, some type of independent monitor, and better guarantees against cost overruns, a Florida government watchdog agency told the state Public Service Commission last week. “We ask you to order some modest changes” in the decommissioning contract, Charles Rehwinkel, an attorney for the […]

There remains no need to transfer management of the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy, the House Appropriations Committee said Sunday. The Trump administration proposed relocating the 46-year-old cleanup program in budget requests both for the current fiscal 2020 and for the […]

A 2021 spending bill up for debate today in the House Appropriations Committee would prohibit development of a proposed new nuclear warhead for the Navy while upping investments in infrastructure to produce new plutonium triggers — but not by as much as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wants. That is according to a detailed […]

A trio of major Energy Department nuclear cleanup sites targeted for fiscal 2021 funding cuts by the White House would be restored at least to current levels in the House of Representatives, according to newly released details of a committee spending package. The House Appropriations Committee on Sunday released the detailed legislative report for its […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) has replaced nearly 10,000 sprinkler heads at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, completing a $46 million retrofit of safety hardware last touched in the 1960s, according to a press release this week.  The new sprinkler heads, installed in six different facilities, replace some that were at or near the […]

The Army Corps of Engineers has slimmed the annual funding expected to be available for the next contract for cleanup of the Luckey Site in Ohio under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). In a second set of responses to vendor questions on the procurement, posted online Wednesday, the Army Corps said contractors […]

The Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky have received approval from the Energy Department to bring back additional personnel who have largely been off-site for months during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Your commitment to enhanced safety and deliberate restart of planned project activities has paved the way for moving to Phase 2 […]

The Senate has approved the nominations of Thomas Summers and Joyce Connery to seats on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). The Senate approved the two by voice vote on July 2, according to the website Congress.gov. That came after both were nominated in May and then reported out of the Senate Armed Services […]

The Energy Department has delayed publication of a draft record of decision (ROD) for a new 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by up to six months. Energy Department Office of Environmental Management officials at Oak Ridge agreed in April, after consulting with state and federal regulators, to push back publication […]

Community advisory boards for nuclear power plants in decommissioning benefit from being formed early in the process and with a clear framework for their operation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report made public Thursday. The agency was required to prepare the report, on best practices for establishment and operation of the local panels, […]

A federal judge has delayed sentencing the former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who pleaded guilty to lying about his connection to a Chinese talent recruitment program, giving the defense attorney a chance to persuade the court not to send his client to prison. It is the second sentencing delay for Turab Lookman, who worked […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina as of Wednesday had confirmed 70 cases of COVID-19 among its workforce, the most known within the facilities of the Department of Energy nuclear complex. The Energy Department this week recorded the first COVID-19-related death among the site’s 11,000-person workers. Officials said Monday that an employee of operations […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee needed just 30 minutes Tuesday to advance its latest funding bill for consideration by the full committee. Subcommittee members proposed no amendments to the $49.6 billion appropriations legislation covering the Department of Energy and other agencies, but did air complaints on matters including the level of nuclear-weapon […]

A spending plan advanced by the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee Tuesday would provide $50 million for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to clean up recently discovered contamination along a nearby public road. The money for investigation and remediation of an area along DP Road in Los Alamos County would […]

A nuclear medicine specialist is taking over as head of BWX Technologies’ medical isotope business after a stint as an adviser to a rival company. Martyn Coombs will on July 20 succeed Tom Burnett as president of BWXT ITG Canada, according to a press release Monday. Burnett is retiring. Coombs will assume profit and loss […]