Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The House Appropriations Committee appears ready to support the Department of Energy’s request for $27.5 million to help stand up a program for temporary storage of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants. The $49.6 billion energy and water appropriations legislation released Monday would provide that amount to cover DOE costs “necessary for nuclear waste disposal […]

A key part of the selection process for a new Idaho Cleanup Project contractor should happen in-person next month in Idaho Falls, according to the Department of Energy. Barring an uptick in COVID-19 cases near the Idaho National Laboratory, vendors vying for the $6.4 billion remediation award should be ready for oral presentations at the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was tracking 13 new cases of COVID-19 across the civilian nuclear weapons enterprise last week ahead of the Independence Day holiday. The weekly count of active cases rose to 46 from 33 as of Thursday, a spokesperson for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency told Weapons Complex […]

Management at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state confirmed two more cases of COVID-19 over the three-day July 4 holiday weekend. The online posts on the Energy Department website for the nuclear cleanup site did not provide any details on the infected individuals – such as whether they are federal employees or work […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May spent $2,859 from its remaining Nuclear Waste Fund balance, breaking its streak of using next-to-nothing from the account intended to pay for the repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. Since early 2019, the regulator had each month spent a few hundred dollars on unspecified program planning and support. It applied […]

The Navy portion of the House Armed Services Committee’s draft of the fiscal 2021 defense authorization bill approved Tuesday would add two vessels over the Senate version and argued a second attack submarine is needed to maintain the Columbia-class schedule. The final HASC markup recommends authorizing the first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Arleigh Burke-class DDG-51 destroyers, one […]

Jacobs said Wednesday it started work in June on a four-year contract to provide technical services for the United Kingdom’s repository for low-level radioactive waste. The contract is valued at £9 million ($11.2 million), according to a release from LLW Repository Ltd. Work carried out under the repository infrastructure framework deal will include mechanical and […]

A Knoxville, Tenn.-based firm has landed a four-year, $4 million contract to provide business and administrative support to the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management at the Oak Ridge Site. The award to Management Solutions LLC, a woman-owned small business, was announced Tuesday by the Environmental Management office for the Tennessee facility. The contract will […]

BWX Technologies and the Virginia Department of Labor and Health are still investigating the circumstances that led to the death of a company worker in a sudden and brief fire two weeks ago at the company’s Lynchburg, Va., plant. “The flash fire occurred in an isolated area of the facility and no other personnel were […]

The head of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) said Tuesday he is optimistic his panel’s version of the next defense authorization bill will receive bipartisan support. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) predicted differences with the Senate on several key provisions, such as a new Indo-Pacific initiative, can be reconciled when the bill heads to conference. […]

About one-tenth of the 225,000 wearable personal respirator masks the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous nuclear weapons agency ordered in April had arrived at facilities as of Wednesday, and the rest are on their way. All of the masks ordered by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from Atlanta-area small business American Dream Builders LLC have shipped […]

The cleanup contractor for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee earned 94%, or $10.4 million, of a potential $11 million fee for its work during the six-month period ended March 31, the Energy Department said in a new performance scorecard. In the process, URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) earned kudos from the DOE Office of Environmental […]

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Thursday. The ExchangeMonitor will publish its weekly newsletters on Thursday, in observance of the Independence Day holiday. Look for the next issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in your inbox on Monday, July 6.

The Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) this week appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court in an effort to halt construction of a new underground shaft at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The case was filed with the state’s high court Monday after the New Mexico Court of Appeals on June […]

Nuclear spending debates in Congress often pit active weapons programs against the remediation of shuttered Manhattan Project and Cold War production sites, but this year’s proceeding has one defense-nuclear cleanup ally on guard against a provision she says could permanently subordinate legacy environmental programs to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). In a 10-minute floor […]

Navarro Research and Engineering earned 90% of its available fee – not including any incentive fee — for its environmental work at the Energy Department’s Nevada National Nuclear Site (NNSS) over a 16-month period ended Jan. 31. That’s the crux of a recently published fee performance scorecard from the DOE Office of Environmental Management. Oak-Ridge, […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management is expected to decide soon whether to keep Nuclear Waste Partnership in place as the prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The joint partnership between Amentum (formerly AECOM Management Services) and BWX Technologies is working under the first option of its $2.4 […]

The Sandia National Laboratories cleared out a couple buildings on its New Mexico campus last week after confirming positive cases of COVID-19 there, though one of the facilities reopened before the weekend was out. Sandia announced Friday that both Building 836 and Building 867 had closed after a postive test was confirmed among the occupants […]

The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee anticipates bipartisan support for the panel’s version of the next defense authorization bill, while adding he wants to see provisions for the Pentagon’s chief management officer and troop movement from Germany addressed at Wednesday’s markup hearing. “I am hopeful, I would say very hopeful, that at […]

The Energy Department intends to retain Swift & Staley for up to six more months as the infrastructure support services provider at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Paducah-based Swift & Staley’s $192 million contract dates to December 2015 and is set to expire in September 2020. As the firm’s initial three-year base period was expiring […]

NorthStar Group Services has requested approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for disposal in Idaho of 2 million gallons of wastewater from decommissioning at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The agency on June 23 informed a subsidiary of the New York City-based environmental solutions provider, NorthStar Nuclear Decommissioning Co., that it had accepted the […]

Representatives of more than 40 companies attended the June 24 industry pre-proposal conference for the upcoming contract for cleanup of the Luckey Site in Ohio under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). The Army Corps on June 26 posted the attendance list, along with the first tranche of […]

An employee at the Germantown, Md., branch of Department of Energy headquarters tested positive for COVID-19 just days before that building advanced to Phase 1 of the agency’s remobilization plan. As far as DOE’s contact tracing showed Friday, nobody who was in close contact with the infected Germantown worker became sick, according to a statement from […]

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said last week he favors increasing funding for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina by more than $51 million above the Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2021 budget request, mostly to finance improvements at the H Canyon complex. Wilson noted that H Canyon as the only hardened nuclear […]

A batch of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) will complete its journey to disposal by truck after a fire near Chicago earlier this month on a railcar being used to transport it to Texas. “The transloaded waste is being re-profiled to be shipped by truck,” a spokesperson for Veolia subsidiary Alaron Nuclear Services, which generated the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing Holtec International to delay conducting a mandatory force-on-force security exercise at the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal regulator issued the exemption on June 18. The document was posted Friday to the agency’s website. Nuclear licensees for months have received expedited NRC […]