Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The power substation that will route electricity to the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is finished, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The Tennessee Valley Authority designed and built the $60 million substation, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency wrote in a press release on Monday.  Aspects of the substation have […]

Deep Isolation, a nuclear waste disposal startup, said Tuesday it wants to raise $10 million to $15 million in venture capital investment The company is developing a borehole disposal concept, in which fuel assemblies containing spent fuel rods are placed in a canister and buried some 2,000 feet below the surface in a very narrow, […]

Bud Albright, who chairs the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, will step in as interim president and CEO of the organization following the Dec. 29 death of David Blee. The Nuclear Industry Council said Monday that the board of directors selected Albright, an undersecretary of energy for former President George W. Bush, as interim leader pending […]

Contractor URS/CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) won 97% or almost $20.4 million out of a potential $21 million fee for the period from April 1 through Sept. 30, 2019. The initial version of the article in the Monday Weapons Complex Morning Briefing listed only the subjective part of the Energy Department fee award.

The Jacobs-led joint venture in charge of remediating the West Valley Demonstration Project Site in New York won $322,000 or 69% of a potential fee of $467,000 during a six-month period in 2019. The U.S. Department of Energy recently issued the scorecard for CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley LLC (CHBWV) for the period from March […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans a somewhat expedited environmental review of its plan to convert a partially built plutonium recycling plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., into a plutonium pit factory, according to an “unpublished” decision posted online Tuesday. The agency has studied since June whether it must complete a brand […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology is making good on last month’s threat to fine the U.S. Department of Energy $1 million for denial of access to certain records for the Hanford Site. The state announced the fine Monday after DOE appealed Ecology’s Dec. 5 ruling finding Hanford officials are wrongly withholding information. The appeal […]

The Energy Department has extended the current task order for contractor CDM to continue work on environmental reports at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, California through June 30. The CDM agreement with the DOE Office of Environmental Management would have expired Dec. 31 without the extension, which raises the current $33 million […]

The AECOM-Jacobs joint venture in charge of decontamination and decommissioning at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee earned about 97% of its potential fee for its cleanup work in the last half of fiscal 2019. URS/CH2M Hill Oak Ridge (UCOR) won almost $20.4 million out of a potential $21 million for the period […]

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management posted an updated its  organization chart last month that lists Thomas Mooney as the new chief of staff. Sources said in December that Mooney, a former U.S. Department of Defense senior manager, was becoming the new chief of staff at the environmental cleanup office although the […]

In a New Year’s boon for Belgium’s Institute for Radioelements, the Department of Energy has postponed by two years a ban on exporting U.S.-origin, weapon-usable uranium for the production of medical isotopes, agency head Dan Brouillette told Congress last week. “[C]urrent global supplies of Mo-99 [Molybdenum 99] produced without the use of HEU [highly enriched […]

The prime contractor for the Y-12 National Security Complex will host an industry day on Jan. 15 for companies interested in building a new lithium production complex at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site, according to a sources sought note posted online before the winter holidays. The Bechtel-led Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) is requesting information from […]

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says New Mexico-based Strategic Management Solutions Inc. (SMSI) failed to provide “hard evidence” that Enterprise Technical Assistance Services (E-TAS) should not have won a $137 million technical services services contract for Energy Department’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office because of a conflict of interest. It is not enough to infer that […]

The Department of Energy has “serious concerns” over the lack of corrective actions its contractor is taking to prepare multimillion dollar Salt Waste Processing Facility for startup at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. Parsons has not properly addressed radiation and fire protection at the salt waste facility in the company’s operational readiness review, […]

The U.S. Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 10 shipments of transuranic waste during November, bringing the total to 285 for the first 11 months of 2019. The figures, from WIPP’s publicly available database, show the underground transuranic waste disposal site has again fallen behind its 2018 pace. It received 291 […]

Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) took home $25.6 million or 95% of its nearly $27 million in available fee for management and operation of the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina between Aug. 1, 2018 and July 31, 2019. The just-released fee determination scorecard from the DOE Office of Environmental Management shows […]

The U.S. Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico briefly held up some shipments of transuranic waste from the Idaho National Laboratory in November after discovery of a hole in one drum, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). The 4 millimeter-hole was discovered Nov. 2 by WIPP inspectors in a […]

David Blee, president and CEO of the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council business consortium, died Sunday apparently while visiting family in Kentucky. His death was confirmed Monday by USNIC Director Caleb Ward. “From what I understand, David had a negative reaction with the medication he was taking to get over his cold,” Ward said in a […]

A joint venture of Perma-Fix Environmental Services and ERRG in December sealed a contract worth at least $15 million for cleanup services at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The 18-month contract covers remediation, construction, and waste management at the Alameda County complex, according to a Dec. 23 press release […]

Holtec International believes it can complete decommissioning of the three nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center in upstate New York in 12 to 15 years at a cost of $2.3 billion, according to a new filing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Power company Entergy said in April it would sell the Buchanan, […]

If the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) still plans to select its preferred technology for the nation’s next domestic uranium enrichment plant by the end of 2019, the agency is taking the decision down to the last few hours of the year. It was around this time of year in 2016 that the semiautonomous […]

Potential bidders on the management and operations contract for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina have until noon ET on Jan. 9 to sign up for briefings. The Energy Department is providing new details on its Jan. 16 industry day for the stand-alone lab contract. The DOE Office of Environmental […]

Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Wednesday in observance of New Year’s Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Energy is extending the comment period by more than a month on its draft environmental assessment for the plan to treat and dispose of about 10,000 gallons of recycled wastewater from the Savannah River Site at a low-level radioactive waste site located out of South Carolina. Stakeholders now have until Feb. […]

MOX Services, prime contractor for the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), played fast and loose with federal contracting rules, the U.S. Department of Energy’s inspector general wrote in a scathing report published days before the winter holiday. The audit, which focused on MOX Services’ administration of project subcontractors, identified some $8.5 million in […]