Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., emplaced 40 shipments of transuranic waste during the first three months of 2020, according to data from its public website. That is down significantly from 59 shipments in the first three months of 2019. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant completed a three-week maintenance outage […]

John Gordon, the retired Air Force general who was deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency before becoming the first-ever administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), died Sunday. He was 73. Current NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty — no relation — was among those remembering the agency’s first leader Monday on Twitter. Some people […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has lost its game of chicken with the Pantex Plant in Texas, where personnel recently blocked a board inspector from attending a meeting of the secretive Nuclear Explosive Safety Study Group, according to a letter posted online. An employee for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) blocked the […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex mistakenly sent improperly packaged radioactive waste to Nevada for six years because no one at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site wrote strict rules for disposing of weapon-related materials, according to a new Department of Energy report.  From 2013 through December 2018, the National Nuclear Security Administration facility sent nine shipments containing […]

Federal agencies will gradually return to normal operations in parallel with the White House’s three-phase plan to reactivate the national economy as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, the Trump administration said Monday. The guidance does not provide any set schedule for the process, but rather says agency heads must make decisions on reducing telework and fully […]

The Energy Department has yet to execute an extension of up to two years for the Amentum-led joint venture responsible for remediation at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The agency in February announced its intention to award a sole-source deal to URS/CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) in the form of a one-year extension, plus options […]

Not much sooner than Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette provided the guidance for doing so, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) added language to its prime contracts for major nuclear-weapon sites for billing the government for paid time off given to workers who couldn’t do their job because of COVID-19. The agency had not posted […]

The state of New York on Monday dismissed the call from a pro-nuclear climate organization to prevent the Indian Point Energy Center from closing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reactor Unit 2 at the upstate nuclear power plant is scheduled to power down permanently by April 30, followed a year later by the […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has scheduled an online pre-solicitation conference and one-on-one meetings on the Savannah River National Laboratory contract for next week. The virtual conference, conducted via WebEx, is scheduled for 11 a.m. April 28. The online meetings with potential bidders are planned for April 29 and, if necessary, April 30, […]

The Government Accountability Office said Friday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has yet to implement a set of “priority” recommendations on securing radiological sources that could be weaponized. “Our April 2019 report, in combination with our previous reports on this topic, demonstrate that there are vulnerabilities in current NRC security requirements such as the risk of […]

The Energy Department assured the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) on Thursday it would oversee remediation of recently discovered radioactive waste on former federal land near the site of a planned housing complex in Los Alamos County. Top brass for the Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration at the Los […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed the license of Honeywell’s Metropolis Works uranium source conversion plant in Illinois for 40 years. The license now expires on March 24, 2060, according to an April 15 notice in the Federal Register. Metropolis Works has been largely idled since November 2017, due to an oversupply in the product […]

The Kansas City National Security Campus, the nation’s manufacturing hub for the non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons, said Monday it will take a baby step back toward normal operations during the COVID-19 pandemic by asking some people to return to work on-site. “The Kansas City National Security Campus is expanding its mission critical work activities,” […]

BWX Technologies said Monday it has appointed Robb LeMasters as senior vice president and chief strategy officer. He is scheduled to start work on July 13. LeMasters, well under 50, was the managing director at hedge fund Blue Harbour Group, whose owner announced its closure in February. LeMasters since 2015 has served on BWXT’s Board of […]

Naval Sea Systems Command on April 10 awarded General Dynamics Electric Boat a $56 million modification to manufacture another 18 missile tubes for the U.S. Columbia-class and U.K. Dreadnaught-class future ballistic missile submarines. The work on the joint U.S.-U.K. common missile compartment program is expected to be finished by May 2028. This modification was funded via U.K. […]

With the Energy Department temporarily doing only minimal physical work at the Hanford Site in Washington state due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is apt to further delay award of a potential 10-year, $15 billion contract for tank waste management at the facility, a source said Wednesday. Many in industry expected the contract for managing […]

The Department of Energy published guidance Wednesday for contractors that need to bill the government for paid time off given to employees unable to report for work due to COVID-19. The new guidance attempts to steer contracting officers through the process of modifying existing deals so that contractors can claim reimbursement under the $2.2 trillion […]

A natural gas pipeline does not pose a significant danger to the nearby Indian Point Energy Center in upstate New York, according to a team of experts formed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The report, from agency personnel and outside specialists, was filed with the industry regulator on April 8 and made public Wednesday. “The […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina on Wednesday confirmed its sixth case of COVID-19, but noted that three previously infected employees have recovered and returned to work. The three others “are being monitored for a return to work within a week,” according to the press release from DOE’s office at Savannah River. […]

With the United States probing the possibility of thawing the social freeze from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories plan to start slowly ramping up on-site work this month. Los Alamos for now remains in a mission-critical operations posture, limiting on-site work to what Director Thomas Mason […]

A coalition of four jurisdictions supporting development of a New Mexico storage facility for spent nuclear power plant fuel on Tuesday tentatively supported giving the public more time to comment on a key document from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Stakeholders currently have until May 22 to provide input on the NRC draft environmental impact statement […]

An article in Wednesday’s Weapons Complex Morning Briefing should have said that Sandia National Laboratories’ Building 954 in Albuquerque, N.M., is a maintenance shop and warehouse that supports employees required to report for work during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the building’s bicycle lab is closed. The story should also have said the case of […]

An employee at the Hanford Site in Washington state is being tested for COVID-19, the Department of Energy said in an overnight post. Cleaning procedures at the facility where the individual works, Building 6269, have been completed in keeping with standards from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hanford management said in the notice. […]

Southern California Edison is unsure how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the cost and schedule for decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The utility has paused tackling the actual tearing down of buildings and removing heavy equipment from the retired nuclear power plant in San Diego County. However, Edison is continuing with […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped the Department of Energy’s plans to dispose of surplus plutonium, nor arguments in a long-running $200 million lawsuit on the matter with the state of South Carolina. The Department of Energy and South Carolina are actually close to settling the matter. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is expected by May 1 to rule on formal protests of two multibillion-dollar Energy Department contracts for the Hanford Site in Washington state, a source said Tuesday. To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has not forced schedule slippage in adjudication of protests to federal contract awards, and the GAO anticipates deciding […]