Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday rejected requests for an immediate freeze of agency staff’s approval of the license transfer for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts. The staff order in August covering the reactor and spent-fuel storage licenses allowed owner Entergy to sell the retired plant to Holtec International […]

The U.S. Senate passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Tuesday, as the House approved appropriations bills for the federal fiscal year: legislation that, together, would provide year-over-year raises for almost all Department of Energy nuclear cleanup and weapons programs. The NDAA passed on a no-doubt margin of 86-8, with four Democrats and […]

The two offices at the U.S. Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state would enjoy higher funding in a compromise appropriations bill for fiscal 2020, according to supporting material released Tuesday. The energy and water development bill agreed to by the House and Senate as part of a larger appropriations package would fund Hanford’s Richland […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) would receive a roughly a $31 million budget for fiscal 2020, which it would have to use to employ the equivalent of at least 110 full-time staff, if a 2020 appropriations package the House approved Tuesday becomes law.  Explanatory language appended to the bill, which advanced out of […]

Veolia has won a contract to build what it describes as a “water detention” facility at the U.S. Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. Veolia Nuclear Solutions-Federal Services said Tuesday that DOE vendor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has awarded it a subcontract to build a system to contain any runoff from demolition of the X-326 process building […]

The U.S. Energy Department on Tuesday issued its final request for proposals (RFP) for the Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning, and Removal contract, which could be worth up to $3 billion over 10 years. The first of what is expected to be many task orders under the multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract would cover removal for an excess […]

In a pound-the-table brief filed this week, Nevada asked a federal judge to hear oral arguments in an ongoing lawsuit to get some 500 kilograms of weapon-usable plutonium shipped out of the state. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration shipped the material to the Nevada National Security Site in 2018 to comply with […]

The U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on Tuesday recommended confirmation of Department of Justice attorney Robert Feitel as the new inspector general for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Feitel would succeed Hubert Bell, who retired last December after more than 22 years as NRC inspector general. The NRC inspector general manages an office, […]

Washington Department of Ecology Deputy Director Polly Zehm is retiring from state service at the end of January, just a month after her boss, agency spokesman Randy Bradbury said Monday. Zehm served more than 22 years with the agency, about eight of them as deputy director, according to an online biography. She sent an internal […]

An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected an advocacy organization’s petition to submit a late argument against licensing a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in West Texas. The Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition said it should be allowed to file the late contention based […]

Congress plans to provide no funding for nuclear waste storage or disposal in a massive fiscal 2020 appropriations bill rolled out Monday evening. House and Senate appropriators released two packages encompassing 12 separate spending bills for the budget year that began on Oct. 1. H.R. 1865, the domestic and international assistance appropriations minibus, features a […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would receive almost $7.5 billion under a compromise fiscal 2020 appropriations bill released by House and Senate lawmakers on Monday. That’s equal with the Senate Appropriation Committee’s energy and water development bill, approved in September, and well above the $7.2 billion in last year’s appropriation: an amount roughly […]

As the Department of Energy prepares to reshape the state of business at the Hanford’s Site by switching its industry affiliations at the former plutonium-production campus, Major League Baseball has proposed abandoning its affiliation with a hometown fixture that arrived before the current slate of cleanup contractors: the Tri-City Dust Devils Minor League Baseball club. […]

Holtec International has already added up to three years to its schedule for decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, which could increase certain costs for the project by $102 million, according to the commonwealth Attorney General’s Office. The figures are based on a presentation Holtec gave last month to a local advisory panel […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration would get all the money it needs, and more, in what’s left of fiscal year 2020, including some $710 million to start work on a controversial two-state plutonium pit complex that would bring a new nuclear-weapon mission to South Carolina. The compromise budget bill, details of which the House unveiled […]

A draft request for proposals for a new cleanup contract at the U.S. Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) could be released by late December, according to a new procurement notice. The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Dec. 11 notice on a federal procurement website that the draft document should be […]

Professional Project Services has received a three-year contract potentially worth more than $2.3 million to support construction by Centrus Energy of a 16-machine uranium enrichment cascade at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. Under the pact, which will employ the equivalent of 2.5 full-time employees, Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve), of Oak […]

The U.S. Navy still has margin to burn on the first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, despite some of that programmatic breathing room getting burned after BWX Technologies incorrectly welded a dozen tubes for the Common Missile Compartments intended for that vessel and Virginia-class attack subs, a senior Navy officer said. “They do have margin to […]

While the clock ticks down on 2019, the U.S. Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has yet to issue a draft request for proposals for a new remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The agency said in a July procurement notice it planned to issue a draft RFP within 60 days, which […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from July to October conducted 10 unannounced inspections of spent fuel transfer operations at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California. The inspections are part of the agency’s response to several problems in the project, notably an August 2018 incident in which a canister was put at risk […]

The Kansas City, Mo., National Security Campus plans this coming spring to open a small satellite factory about 1 mile east from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) main workshop for non-nuclear components of nuclear-weapon. “Occupancy is expected to begin next spring after tenant improvements such as utilities and furnishings are completed,” a spokesperson […]

Department of Energy contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security returned some piping to a subcontractor after determining it was unsuitable for installation in the main uranium processing building at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. Mechanical contractor Hicks & Ingle, of Knoxville, Tenn., fabricated the pipes under a two-year contract awarded in 2018. A spokesperson for […]

A compromise National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would authorize all the nuclear weapons spending the White House seeks for fiscal 2020 for passed the House in a landslide Wednesday evening, despite earlier threats of resistance from left-leaning Democrats. The annual bill, which sets policy and spending limits for defense programs, passed 377-48. The “no” […]

An article in Wednesday’s edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, “NDAA Would Stop DNFSB Members From Serving After Their Terms Expire,” should have said all three members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board are serving expired terms. An article in Monday’s edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, “Final RFP for Nationwide Deactivation Contract Expected Soon, DOE […]

New U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette assured a Senate committee recently that steps are being taken to tighten his department’s shipment of radioactive waste for disposal at the Nevada National Security Site. Brouillette, at the time deputy energy secretary, listed several measures in a written response to a question submitted by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission intends to issue a follow-on contract for support in finalizing the emergency preparedness portion of its ongoing decommissioning rulemaking. ICF Incorporated LLC would receive a two-year noncompetitive award for “Completion of Emergency Preparedness Decommissioning Rulemaking and Guidance,” according to a Dec. 5 procurement notice from the NRC. Agency staff in […]

A risk of combustion linked to calcium prompted suspension in November of transuranic waste shipments from the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant further south in New Mexico, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). Workers discovered calcium metal in certain transuranic material that can ignite […]