Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The United Kingdom is expected to generate 4.6 million cubic meters of radioactive waste through 2135, most of it from nuclear power production, according to the latest inventory from the government’s Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The department inventories the nation’s existing and anticipated holdings of radioactive waste and materials every three […]

Las Vegas-based Longenecker & Associates said in Tuesday it has hired a former Fluor supervisor as its manager for New Mexico projects. Lindsay Wallace started Monday and her role will include serving as Longenecker’s program manager for legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Longenecker has a subcontract with Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los […]

The USS Tennessee ballistic-missile submarine went on an Atlantic Ocean patrol in December, armed with “one or two” of the brand new W76-2 low-yield warheads, the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists reported Wednesday. “We estimate that one or two of the 20 missiles on the USS Tennessee and subsequent subs will be armed with the W76-2, […]

The chief financial officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is moving into the corresponding position at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Cherish Johnson will start as the regulator’s CFO on Feb. 18, according to a Monday press release. She succeeds Maureen Wylie, who retired after working for 35 years in the federal government. […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board wants to forge a closer working relationship with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. In a Jan. 10 letter to DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Chairwoman Jean Bahr urged “a framework for more regular interaction” between the two […]

The Department of Energy is not publicly discussing the progress of conversion of highly enriched uranium shipped from Canada at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, including whether the project remains on track to be completed in April. Multiple questions sent via email last week to the department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is creating a new Department of Energy policy shop to handle “all policy within the Department,” and appointing a new personal adviser for nuclear security, according to an all-hands memo dated Tuesday. To do this, Brouillette will rebrand the current Office of Policy (OP) as the Office of Strategic Planning […]

The Washington state Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday on a lower court’s $8.1 million award in 2017 to a former employee of Energy Department contractor Mission Support Alliance (MSA) at the Hanford Site. The support services vendor is asking Division III of the appeals court to reverse the award against it and former vice […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

The Department of Energy should expand its use of underground research laboratories (URLs) for research on geologic disposal of nuclear waste, including establishing facilities in the United States, a federal panel of experts said in a report Tuesday. The Energy Department has since 2012 participated in research at URLs in Europe and Asia, the Nuclear […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy has begun a limited program to explore opportunities for recycling used nuclear fuel, a senior official said Tuesday. “We are starting a small effort to look at some of these options, but it’s early in development and there’s no clear outcome on where it’s going […]

Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, the Jacobs-led deactivation and cleanup contractor at the Energy Department’s Paducah Site in Kentucky, earned 67% of its potential fee for work during fiscal 2019, or $6.97 million of a potential $10.38 million, according to a recent performance scorecard. The vendor pocketed just over $1 million of a possible $2.33 million […]

International engineering and construction provider AECOM could complete the $2.4 billion sale of its government contracting division to a joint venture of two New York investment firms within days, a company official said Tuesday in Alexandria, Va. Eric Knox, an AECOM vice president for strategic development for nuclear and environment, cited the impending change during […]

Lockheed Martin on Tuesday reported a strong close to its 2019 fiscal year with double-digit top and bottom line growth, and the company expects further gains in 2020. Net income in the fourth quarter jumped 15% to $1.5 billion, $5.29 earnings per share (EPS), from $1.3 billion ($4.39 EPS) a year ago, comfortably above consensus estimates […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The White House does not plan to request any funding in fiscal 2021 for licensing the nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., issue experts said at an industry conference here Tuesday. That would reverse the Trump administration’s efforts in its last three budget proposals to persuade Congress to appropriate money to […]

A new inspector general’s report bashed the human resources department at the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as ineffective, inefficient, and incapable of supporting the agency’s oversight of defense-nuclear sites. The board’s “human resources program is currently not designed and implemented to effectively support the execution of its mission,” reads a Monday report from […]

Mid-America Conversion Services, the contractor in charge of operating depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and Paducah Site in Kentucky, won roughly 69% of its potential fee for fiscal 2019. That represents $2.42 million of a potential $3.5 million for the federal budget year that ended Sept. […]

Los Alamos County, N.M., wants a federal review board to reverse a December decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying the county’s stormwater discharges contribute to pollution of the Rio Grande River. In a petition filed Jan. 17 with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, Los Alamos County seeks to overturn the Dec. 16 decision […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, the Energy Department cleanup contractor at the former gaseous diffusion plant site in Pike County, Ohio, pocketed 86% of its potential fee for fiscal 2019, or $19.20 million of a potential $22.78 million. The vendor claimed about $3.61 million of a potential $6.68 million in subjective fee. It also took home $15.59 million […]

The Government Accountability Office should by the end of April rule on challenges to $14 billion worth of Energy Department contract awards at the Hanford Site in Washington state. With the deadline now passed for additional challenges, the GAO has single protests on its docket for each award: the 10-year, $10-billion Hanford Central Plateau cleanup […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has decided to use a cleanup facility in Ohio to help produce high-purity depleted uranium metal for nuclear weapons programs. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency will do that by installing a fourth process line at the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion facility at the Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, […]

Demolition of a Cold War-era legacy facility in December still leaves more than 1,100 facilities and buildings to tear down at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Specifically, 1,127 facilities have been identified for eventual demolition, SRS spokesman Monte Volk said via email. Those facilities encompass offices, power production plants, […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is giving the state of South Carolina more time to submit new data and input on the license renewal of Westinghouse Electric’s Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility. The formal 30-day comment period on the federal agency’s draft environmental assessment for the renewal application ended on Nov. 27, 2019. On Jan. 13, […]

Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), the vendor in charge of legacy environmental remediation operations at the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico, won 84% of its potential fee for work done during fiscal 2019. Altogether, N3B took home more than $8.6 million of a potential amount exceeding $10.2 million, according […]

A former physicist at the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory on Friday pleaded guilty to one count of lying to federal authorities about his alleged connection to a Chinese government-sponsored talent recruiting program. Turab Lookman, formerly of the New Mexico facility’s Theoretical Division, pleaded guilty to the second of three counts of fraud […]

Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) held a groundbreaking on Jan. 23 to renovate Dry Dock 4. The U.S. Navy said the renovation effort will cost $200 million and take almost three years. This makes it the largest NNSY initiative under the larger $21 billion 20-year Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP). The Navy said this renovation will […]

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in Canada said Friday that just two communities in Ontario remain in contention to host an underground disposal facility for spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear power plants. The locations are the township of Ignace in northwest Ontario and the municipality of South Bruce in southern Ontario. In a […]