Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

The Energy Department anticipates the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina will be better able to “engage with the research community” by having a its own operations contract, according to documents recently posted online. The slides used for an April 28 virtual online meeting on the draft request for proposals for the potential 10-year, […]

The ExchangeMonitor’s 2020 Decommissioning Strategy Forum is being pushed back from June to September and relocated to Henderson, Nev. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to stick to the original schedule to hold the conference on June 8-9 in Nashville, according to the ExchangeMonitor’s parent company, Access Intelligence. “Please note that out of concern […]

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state rose to four as of Wednesday, one more than a week ago. Most of the four infected individuals have “not been on site for several weeks,” DOE Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said in a post on Facebook. No further […]

The environmental liability of the Energy Department’s Office of Legacy Management is sure to increase from its recent $7.35 billion as it assumes responsibility for more remediated properties, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office. Legacy Management conducts maintenance and surveillance following cleanup of radioactively contaminated sites by DOE’s Office of […]

The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) plans talks this summer with the Department of Energy on potential modifications to a 2016 legal agreement over nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The 2016 consent decree revamped a prior 2005 deal between NMED and the federal agency on cleanup of contamination left from Manhattan […]

Congress should keep its eye on cost overruns for the upgrade that will make the F-35A  fighter aircraft nuclear-capable this decade by allowing the Government Accountability Office to keep investigating the program for a few more years, the congressional investigator said this week. Block 4 upgrades will eventually allow Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter to […]

It will take a couple more weeks than earlier thought to certify it is time to begin constructing a new calciner in Building 9212 of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee: the U.S. defense-uranium hub that manufactures the secondary stages for nuclear weapons. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “anticipates approval of the Y-12 […]

The Government Accountability Office was not convinced by the argument from a Bechtel-led joint venture that it should have been issued a long-term contract for remediation at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state because its proposed price tag for performing the first set of tasks was lower than that from the rival group that […]

Hanford Communities Executive Director Pamela Larsen is retiring after a quarter-century of advocating for localities around the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Larsen is the only executive director in the history of the intergovernmental organization established under Washington state law in 1994. Hanford Communities represents two counties, four cities, and a Port District […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will next week consider Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes’ nomination to the No. 2 spot at the Department of Energy. The White House in March nominated Menezes as deputy secretary of energy. He would succeed Dan Brouillette, who became energy secretary in December. After a career on Capitol […]

Jan Carlin has stepped down as managing director of the Waste Management Symposia (WMS), the nonprofit organizer of the annual conference in Phoenix for the nuclear cleanup and waste management industries. Carlin, a nuclear business consultant, started on the job in September 2017 and had only intended to remain for two years, but stayed on […]

The Government Accountability Office said Tuesday the Energy Department should use best practices when seeking alternatives to the Pretreatment Facility for the Waste Treatment Plant being built at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Pretreatment Facility is intended to separate radioactive waste into high-level and low-level streams before processing at the Waste Treatment Plant, […]

Federal contractors would get leniency for missing deliverables because of their COVID-19 response plans, and prime contractors would be in line for quicker payments, under a Democratic Party-authored relief bill that debuted Tuesday in the House of Representatives – and was flatly rejected by the Senate’s Republican leadership. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency […]

It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to brief a group representing nuclear-site host communities about the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s (DNFSB) latest safety recommendation to the Department of Energy, according to the board chairman. “[U]sing staff resources, even though marginal in this instance, to educate a public interest group on complex technical […]