Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The nominee for the No. 2 position at the Department of Energy on Wednesday affirmed the Trump administration’s intention to move ahead with a program for interim storage of nuclear waste rather than continuing to press for disposal under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. “Let me be very clear about this. The president has been very […]

Tim Griffin, executive director of the Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Energy, Technology, and Environmental Business Association for nearly five years, has left to take another job. Griffin’s last day was May 8 at the trade group that represents about 170 firms and individuals doing business with the Energy Department or its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration […]

The Energy Department has reached a deal with the state of California to tear down and remove 10 contaminated buildings at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Ventura County. Eliminating decaying buildings within the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility Complex should avoid a release of hazardous substances and minimize risk to the public in the […]

The Air Force contract to build more than 600 new commercial engines to power the aging, nuclear-capable B-52 bomber through the 2050s will run 17 years with six years of firm money, according to a solicitation released Tuesday.  The service’s Commercial Engine Replacement Program calls for 608 new commercial engines, plus additional spare engines and […]

Nuclear Fuel Services has not tracked any new cases of COVID-19 among its workforce since an outbreak in mid-April sickened multiple people at its Erwin, Tenn., uranium-processing plant, a spokesperson said Thursday morning. The BWX Technologies subsidiary “has had no new cases of COVID-19 among our employees,” the spokesperson said by email. “Those affected are […]

The Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) suspended most of its nuclear operations in late March because of COVID-19, but expansion of the site’s underground subcritical testing laboratory came back online in the first week of April. Expanding the existing U1a Complex as part of the U1a Complex Enhancements Project (UCEP) is central to plans to […]

Precautions are being taken to protect returning employees at Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites from COVID-19, Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes said Wednesday. “We are moving to reopen some of the facilities” overseen by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, Menezes told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during his nomination hearing to become […]

The Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Monday in observance of Memorial Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Tuesday, May 26.

International Isotopes in April secured a $495,500 bank loan via federal COVID-19 relief legislation to help pay its employees, according to a quarterly filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in the CARES Act, signed into law in March, is intended to assist small businesses in meeting payroll, and […]

The Energy Department has yet to issue a notice to proceed to the new services contractor selected late last year for the Hanford Site in Washington state, Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS). Typically, most new vendors receive the notice to start transition shortly after either winning the award or prevailing in any protest against […]

The United Kingdom’s privately operated Low-Level Waste Repository Ltd. (LLWR) on Monday said it would distribute as much as £65 million ($79.8 million) among six companies for radioactive waste treatment services. The “framework contract” has a four-year ordering period, according to an LLWR press release. The participating companies are: Active Collection Bureau, Augean Treatment, Cyclife […]

The first employees who return to Department of Energy headquarters buildings in Washington, D.C., and nearby Maryland, whenever that might be, will get a taste of the new normal their colleagues at nuclear sites have experienced for weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, new agency guidance shows. Temperature checks, pre-arrival symptom questionnaires, and continued social distancing […]

FirstEnergy Corp. on Tuesday announced a long list of changes in its executive suite, starting with President and CEO Chuck Jones peeling off one of his titles. The Board of Directors for the Akron, Ohio-based power company on Tuesday approved executive Steven Strah’s appointment as president, with Jones remaining in the top spot at CEO […]

The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) in Nebraska on May 13 completed moving all spent fuel at the retired Fort Calhoun Station nuclear power plant into dry storage. Workers began moving the first of 30 canisters on Oct. 14, 2019. Overall, the 30 canisters hold 944 bundles of used fuel, according to a presentation given […]

The Energy Department intends to issue a sole-source contract to Waste Control Specialists (WCS) for continued administrative support for certain radioactive material already stored at its Andrews County, Texas, facility. In a pair of notices published Monday and Tuesday on a federal procurement website, the Energy Department said it wants to prevent a lapse in […]

Stakeholders now have until June 29 to comment on Energy Department plans to use grout to stabilize three underground waste structures at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The original deadline for comments was April 24, which was later extended until May 22, then pushed back again, according to a recent notice from DOE. The […]

The  Department of Energy on Monday published the framework that its employees and support services contractors will use to plan their return to federal sites and offices during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. The framework quantifies that there are four phases in the oft-discussed federal “phased approach” to reopening: phase 0 through phase 3. Phase 0, […]

Some of the Nevada National Security Site’s nuclear programs ground to a halt in April, according to a new report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (SNFSB). At the same time, the independent federal agency reported Friday, some non-nuclear work continued at the U1a Complex, which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is expanding […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico on Monday reported its second confirmed case of COVID-19. An employee of subcontractor Constructors Inc. received a positive test for the novel coronavirus 2019 on Friday, DOE and WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership said in a Facebook post. The worker developed symptoms, which can […]

There is one new confirmed positive case of COVID-19 at the Savannah River Site, bringing the total to 14, the Department of Energy facility in Aiken, S.C., announced Monday. The 13 people who were previously confirmed to have caught the disease caused by the novel coronavirus 2019 have recovered and gone back to work, according […]

The Department of Energy could hold virtual debrief sessions this week for bidders on the Hanford Site Tank Closure Contract just awarded to a team led by BWX Technologies. The sessions should happen Thursday and Friday, an industry source said Monday. During these briefings, DOE explains the thinking behind a contract award. Those companies then […]

Three weeks after the Department of Energy authorized operators of nuclear-weapon sites to bill the government for expenses associated with COVID-19 prevention, most of those prime contractors are still working on trickling down relief to subcontractors. One of the primes’ main mechanisms for recouping such expenses is to bill the government in accordance with Section […]

The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives on Friday pushed through a $3-trillion COVID-19 economic relief bill, which the GOP-led Senate has refused to take up and the White House has threatened to veto. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, H.R. 6800, passed the House in a 208-199 vote. It was […]

There is no reasonable alternative to the full decommissioning and disassembly of the retired SM-1 nuclear power reactor at Fort Belvoir, Va., according to the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps on Monday announced the release of the final environmental assessment, finding of no significant impact, and finding of no practicable alternative for the […]

More staff is being recalled for cleanup work at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a Fluor Idaho spokesman said Friday. “We have slowly started to increase staff on an as-needed basis to support limited activities at the Idaho Cleanup Project, and those numbers vary from day to day,” Fluor Idaho spokesman Erik Simpson […]

An article in the May 14 issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the year by which the Energy Department’s Office of Legacy Management is expected to have received 52 additional remediated properties for surveillance and monitoring. The year is 2050.

The Air Force said Friday it completed the preliminary design review (PDR) for the Northrop Grumman-developed Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) in late April. The PDR took place April 28-30 and is the latest major programmatic milestone for the service to undertake virtually, including over classified computer networks, as many program personnel work limited hours or […]