Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Deep Isolation said Monday it has secured a contract to support an industry feasibility study on the potential for same-site selection for both new advanced nuclear power reactors and borehole-based disposal of the spent fuel they will generate. The Berkeley, Calif., company offers the nuclear waste disposal approach being studied – horizontal deep borehole. For […]

An employee of the technical services vendor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico has contracted COVID-19. This marks the facility’s first confirmed infection of novel coronavirus 2019. The employee of North Wind Portage tested positive Friday after working remotely since March 18, according to a news release from DOE’s […]

The American Nuclear Society last week formally backed preliminary findings from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in support of licensing a facility in New Mexico for temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel. The March 10 draft environmental impact statement (EIS) from staff at the industry regulator “provides a thorough evaluation of the environmental impacts of the […]

The Department of Energy’s top nuclear energy official on Monday expressed regret over the imminent closure of one reactor at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York state. “It pains me to see Indian Point Unit 2 prematurely shutting down this Thursday,” Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal wrote on Twitter. “The […]

New Mexico’s delegation to the U.S. Senate last week asked the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to further delay into mid-June the public comment period on an environmental review of pit production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich (both D-N.M.). wrote to NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty on April 22. […]

Reduced staffing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Department of Energy to suspend construction of the Saltstone Disposal Unit 7 (SDU 7) at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said in a recent report. The April 3 staff report filed with DNFSB Technical Director Christopher Roscetti […]

Two more people at the Department of Energy’s Forrestal Building headquarters in Washington, D.C., have tested positive for COVID-19, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said Friday. One employee has not been in the buildng since March 13, the other since March 27, Brouillette said in the statement. Both have since recovered in self-quarantine, he added. That […]

Germany’s Federal Ministry for Defence wants to buy American for the future of the country’s nuclear security-sharing mission with the United States, urging lawmakers to approve the purchase of 30 Boeing F/A-18 aircraft to carry future B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs. The German publication Der Spiegel on Sunday reported that Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer informed Secretary […]

Sandia National Laboratories has been cleared to start processing COVID-19 tests for the general public, according to U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). The nuclear-weapon engineering lab started testing its own employees for the viral disease on April 7 at its Albuquerque, N.M., headquarters, and on April 15 at its Livermore, Calif., campus. On Tuesday, according […]

US Ecology said Monday the value of its stock has been nearly halved by the “unprecedented time of uncertainty” generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission provided further illustration of the stress being placed on the radioactive waste management industry, within the larger chaos the crisis has inflicted […]

Two Fluor vice presidents are leaving the company, and all executives are temporarily taking a 20% cut in their base pay, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the April 10 notice, Fluor announced the separation from employment of Executive Vice President for Systems and Supply Chain Ray Barnard and […]

An employee of the Energy Department’s support services contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington has the second confirmed case of COVID-19 at the former plutonium production complex. In a weekend memo to employees of Mission Support Alliance, President Bob Wilkinson and Chief Operating Officer Amy Basche said they recently learned “a member of the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it would give the public additional time to comment on a preliminary finding in support of licensing a facility in New Mexico for temporary storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants. “We’ve extended the public comment period on our draft Environmental Impact Statement for #Holtec‘s proposed spent #nuclear […]

The Government Accountability Office on Thursday rejected a protest against the new long-term Energy Department contract for support services at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The potential 10-year, $4 billion contract was awarded in December to Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, comprised of Leidos, Centerra, and Parsons. A Huntington Ingalls Industries-led team that also bid […]

The Ohio Department of Health said in federal court documents it cannot provide the cancer records sought by local residents suing current and former contractors at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers, in the Southern District of Ohio, gave the plaintiffs until Friday to file a motion […]

The Anderson County Department of Health is scheduled Sunday to offer free COVID-19 tests in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The department, part of the government for the host county of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site and Y-12 National Security Complex, will offer tests from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time at Roane State […]

Regulators in Canada have requested additional detail on Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ environmental impact statement (EIS) for its planned near-surface disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste at the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. The group of federal and provincial officials, headed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), submitted 37 information requests for the updated EIS […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday it intends by the end of 2020 to finish its evaluation of the application to transfer the licenses for the Indian Point Energy Center in New York state from owner Entergy to prospective buyer Holtec International. “Our review could be completed later this year,” according to Bruce Watson, chief of […]

Citing concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic response raised by anti-nuclear activists, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has extended by 15 days a public comment period on a draft environmental impact statement for making plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The agency notified the the citizen watchdog group Savannah River Site […]

The former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who pleaded guilty to lying about connections to a paid Chinese talent-recruiting program wants his sentencing date postponed because of COVID-19-related health concerns, court papers show. Turab Lookman, who pleaded guilty in January to one count of lying to federal authorities, is now nearly “70 years old and […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management confirmed Tuesday that contracts for nuclear cleanup sites are being modified to include paid leave for certain workers who cannot telecommute during the COVID-19 pandemic. Environmental Management “is in the process of modifying applicable prime contracts to incorporate a contract clause to implement Section 3610 of the CARES […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday outlined the latest opportunity for regulatory exemptions for licensees during the COVID-19 pandemic, this one for on-the-job training for security personnel. Expedited reviews of exemption requests are being offered for several subsections in the NRC regulations on licensee security personnel, according to an NRC letter Monday to three nuclear […]

Lockheed Martin on Tuesday reported solid first-quarter financial results with strong sales and cash flow, but flat earnings, results it said were not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the outlook for the rest of the year is “uncertain” and is dependent in part on the “duration and spread” of the crisis, and the resulting actions […]

The Air Force plans to continue building its next nuclear cruise missile, the Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), with Raytheon [RTN] as the sole-source contractor, according to an April 17 release. The announcement arrives years ahead of an expected down-select. Both Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have been developing LRSO designs under technology maturation and risk reduction (TMRR) phase contracts, awarded […]

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 […]