Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

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: […]