Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has knocked a year off its schedule for the review of SHINE Medical Technologies’ license application to operate its medical isotope production plant in Janesville, Wisc. The agency had expected it would need 36 months to complete the technical review after the application was formally accepted in October 2019. The anticipated […]

Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has offered initial support for licensing a facility in West Texas for temporary storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants. The recommendation is included in a draft version of the environmental impact statement for Interim Storage Partners’ planned consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in Andrews County. The document […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Department of Energy nuclear-weapon site closest to a major metropolitan area, is preparing for another month of stay-at-home orders in surrounding Alameda County, Calif., which has a high number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Livemore is still performing only essential national security work and still requires most of its […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is renewing a $14.4 million grant for New Mexico State University to continue environmental monitoring near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, announced the five-year financial assistance Thursday to support the NMSU engineering college’s Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research […]

The Air Force might deploy its Long-Range Standoff Weapon cruise missile earlier than anticipated, while the new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile should be ready on time, the head of the service’s Global Strike Command said Wednesday. Raytheon will build the Long-Range Standoff missile (LRSO), while Northrop Grumman looks all but certain to win […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week it identified no safety violations during three unannounced inspections earlier this year of used fuel operations at the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California. The findings were presented in an April 28 letter from Greg Warnick chief of the agency’s Reactor Inspection Branch, to Doug […]

An article in the April 29 issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing incorrectly reported the operational status of the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. Pantex has been limited to mission-critical operations since April 16, but external communication from the plant mistakenly reported this month the facility was in a different operational posture during the COVID-19 crisis. Pantex […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is willing to let Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) personnel attend meetings of the secretive Nuclear Explosives Safety Study Group at the Pantex Plant in Texas on a “trial” basis, according to a letter published this week. The two federal agencies have fought since 2018 over whether DNFSB […]

Vice presidents at Department of Energy contractor Bechtel are taking pay cuts of up to 25% over 90 days during the COVID-19 crisis The one-quarter reduction applies to senior vice presidents, while principal vice presidents at the Reston, Va.-based company are receiving a 10% reduction, management told employees on April 6. The measure is a […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina on Tuesday confirmed its 11th cases of COVID-19. A spokesperson for the DOE office at Savannah River declined to provide any additional details on the individual. To date, nine of the 11 people who have tested positive at the DOE complex near the South Carolina-Georgia border […]

While it has made progress, the Department of Energy still needs to more fully address priority recommendations to improve performance in its nuclear security and cleanup missions, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Wednesday. In an annual update, the congressional auditor said it has 20 priority recommendations across the Energy Department, including eight recommendations new […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) might lose political support in Congress if the U.S.-Russia New START nuclear arms control treaty lapses, the immediate past head of the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency said Wednesday. About 80% of lawmakers on Capitol Hill support both nuclear arms modernization and international nuclear arms control, retired Lt. Air Force […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March spent $713 of its remaining balance from the federal fund for disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste. As it has for more than a year, the agency spent the money on unspecified program planning and support, according to the latest Nuclear Waste Fund update to Congress. That left with […]

The host states of the Department of Energy’s three main nuclear weapons production sites are among those planning early, partial reopenings after weeks or months of shuttering most businesses to slow the spread of COVID-19. Tennessee, Texas, and Missouri, host states to the Y-12 National Security Complex, the Pantex Plant and the Kansas City National […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a meeting for May 8 to discuss means of relief that could be provided during the COVID-19 pandemic to licensees for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs). “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss how NRC ISFSI licensees can request temporary regulatory relief during the COVID-19 public health […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management intends to issue a sole-source business deal to a firm to provide employee training on end-state contracting. In a Monday procurement notice, the agency announced plans to hire Management Concepts Inc. (MCI) to provide the training as the nuclear cleanup office continues to overhaul its management of environmental […]

The Energy Department has exercised a one-year option to keep Spectra Tech on the job overseeing spent fuel facilities at the Idaho National Laboratory through March 2021. In February, DOE picked up its last option for the current contract, according to procurement documents. The Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based engineering and environmental services firm began work on […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Pantex Plant in Texas said Monday it assembled the “first production capability unit” of the W88 Alt-370 submarine-launched nuclear warhead, a precursor to the first production unit intended to prove the entire warhead design is ready for mass manufacturing. The phrase “first production capability unit” officially debuted in February […]

The privately held Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) will stay on for at least four more years as the operator of facilities owned by federal Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL). Atomic Energy of Canada announced Monday that it had exercised the four-year option on CNL’s contract. The six-year base for the award began […]

A New Mexico advocacy organization is asking the state Court of Appeals to block last week’s temporary state approval for the U.S. Department of Energy to sink a new underground shaft at the Waste isolation Pilot Plant. The Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) filed its motion with the court Friday. That same day, the […]

The Air Force probably will not award a contract to build more than 600 next-generation, silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles more than a month or two earlier than planned, the chief executive of presumptive prime Northrop Grumman said Wednesday morning during a conference call with investors. That would put the award around July or August. Northrop […]

A contractor employee at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, left New Mexico on March 23. An article in the Monday Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the date.

Mission Support Alliance is shopping around for a subcontractor to build a new water treatment facility at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The Hanford support services contractor said in an April 25 procurement notice it is accepting expressions of interest from vendors to build a new 10,000-square-foot microfiltration membrane water treatment plant. […]

The Department of State on Friday framed deployment of a low-yield warhead aboard U.S. submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles as a means of preventing a nuclear arms race. The agency’s 10-page, election-year publication is part of a series of Arms Control and International Security Papers and takes aim at most critiques against the low-yield warhead leveled […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Monday it had issued a roughly $240,000 fixed-price contract to a small business in Georgia to provide almost a quarter-million, Chinese-made, KN95-style respirator masks for its contractor and federal employees. “This order is to procure masks for NNSA to meet expected demand when employees return to work,” an agency […]

Reductions in on-site staffing at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic have temporarily halted virtually all physical work on the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, a state official said Monday. Progress on the IWTU is on hold “as much of the work requires materials/contractors from outside Idaho and some confined space […]

Pennsylvania’s top environmental official on Monday expressed continued concerns about the adequacy of funding to complete decommissioning of the partially melted-down reactor Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell submitted a new letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it considers transferring the […]