Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday added his voice to the chorus urging President Donald Trump to extend the New START nuclear-arms-control treaty with Russia into early 2026. While “New START is not perfect,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during a hearing on the treaty, with testimony from former government […]

A federal judge ruled Tuesday against an activist organization’s lawsuit seeking a halt to the transfer of spent reactor fuel into dry storage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California, according to both sides in the litigation. Following oral arguments on Nov. 25, Judge Janis Sammartino, of U.S. District Court for Southern […]

The Department of Energy and anti-nuclear activists seeking to stop construction of the Uranium Processing Facility could find themselves in an appeals court in January to argue about a lower court’s September decision that forced a partial federal redo of the facilty’s environmental review. The public won’t know until 2020 exactly what DOE’s issue is […]

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy on Tuesday said it had secured a contract for dismantlement, segmentation, and packing of the reactor internals and reactor pressure vessel for the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts. This is the Wilmington, N.C., company’s second contract for this work at a nuclear plant acquired by Holtec International for decommissioning. […]

The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reauthorize the Energy Department’s cleanup of the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state. The measure awaits President Donald Trump’s signature after receiving unanimous consent from the Senate. The House of Representatives in March approved the bill, which was then advanced by the Senate Energy and […]

Perma-Fix Northwest accepted a $23,275 fine for its failure in 2013-2014 to ensure it had sufficient third-party liability coverage for its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) radioactive waste facility in Richland, Wash., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. Representatives for the federal agency and the company signed a consent agreement on Aug. 12. The […]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has not received a status report yet from the U.S. Department of Energy on procurement of a new multibillion-dollar contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state. “We haven’t received a response yet,” a Feinstein spokesman said via an email Tuesday. On Sept. 27, Feinstein, along with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), […]

The U.S. Department of Energy is studying whether to sign off on an extension of the legal deadline to end exports of weapon-grade uranium for foreign production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). The agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is accepting comments from the public through Dec. 27 ahead of the secretarial certification […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in October spent $485 of its remaining balance from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund, leaving it with $405,992 absent further appropriations from Congress. As has been the case for most of the year, the agency spent just a few hundred dollars on unspecified program planning and support, according to the […]

AECOM disclosed Nov. 29 that Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Carla Christofferson was resigning her post effective immediately. The Los Angeles-based infrastructure multinational said its leadership and Christofferson “mutually agreed” she would resign her management position, but would remain a “non-executive” employee of AECOM through Dec. 16, according to a filing with the […]

Thousands of pounds of stainless steel originally intended for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., has been donated to welding programs at nearby high schools and colleges. Fifteen high schools and colleges each received a ton of metal from the U.S. Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National […]

BWX Technologies has tapped Dave Broussard, a former contractor at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, to be general manager of the company’s nuclear-naval parts factory in Barberton, Ohio. Broussard will take over the 750-person manufacturing site as it prepares to hire 80 more people and spent $80 million to ramp up production of […]

Washington state Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon said Monday she would retire at the end of this month. Ecology is the state regulator for the U.S. Department of Energy’s sprawling Hanford Site through a variety of permits including the dangerous waste, or site-wide, permit. Bellon announced her pending retirement Monday after 25 years as […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is accepting comments from the public through Jan. 13 on the scope of an add-on to its environmental impact statement (EIS) for SHINE Medical Technologies’ isotope production plant in Janesville, Wis. The agency issued the original document in October 2015 for SHINE’s application for a construction permit for its facility, […]

Some time before the new year, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will award a new protective forces contract to guard its Albuquerque Complex at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. The three-year contract will include a one-year base period and two one-year options, according to a Nov. 19 solicitation from the […]

The U.S. Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is optimistic the state will green light its plans for a new utility shaft that is opposed by two local advocacy groups. “The project remains on course as we prepare for the construction process,” Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) spokesman Bobby […]

James Peery will become director of the Sandia National Laboratories on Jan. 1, after current director Stephen Younger retires, the multi-state Department of Energy nuclear-weapon-engineering lab announced Monday. Peery is now  associate laboratory director of national security sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. In that role, he succeeded Brent Park, who […]

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed Dan Brouillette to be the 15th secretary of energy by a 70-15 vote, setting the stage for former secretary Rick Perry’s deputy to lead the roughly $30-billion-a-year agency responsible for U.S. nuclear weapons, waste, and energy. A Department of Energy spokesperson did not immediately reply to a query about […]

A cybersecurity provider for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is urging reconsideration of a recent follow-on award to a rival company. The transition from the $271 million contract held by information-technology specialist Criterion Systems, of Vienna, Va., was driven “by a perceived need to rapidly remediate a contract protest action lingering from 2016,” […]

At the end of the last federal fiscal year on Sept. 30, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was overseeing decommissioning of 23 nuclear power and early demonstration reactors. Of those reactors, 11 were undergoing active decommissioning and the remaining 12 were in SAFSTOR, or safe storage, in which final cleanup can be delayed for up […]

Veteran Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi is set to take over Tuesday as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Grossi, 58, will become the sixth director general of the United Nations organization, which promotes the peaceful use of nuclear technology and the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons technology and materials. He will serve […]

The U.S. Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 275 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during the first 10 months of this year, compared to 272 during the same period in 2018. October is the last full month for which shipment information is available through WIPP’s public database. It shows that the […]

Rick Perry ended his tenure as U.S. secretary of energy on Sunday, but not before issuing a press release highlighting the progress of cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Ventura County, Calif. “I am proud of the work the Department of Energy (DOE) has done to advance the final cleanup of the […]

The Nuclear Energy Institute is asking a federal appeals court to undo the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s determination that it has full authority to regulate disposal of very low-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, even in states that have taken on much of the agency’s oversight of radioactive materials. At issue is Regulatory Issue […]

The federal fund intended to pay for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., held $40.9 billion in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of fiscal 2019 on Sept. 30, according to the latest audit from the Department of Energy. That rose from $39.2 billion in the Nuclear Waste Fund at the close of […]

Oversight of contractors and environmental remediation remain at the forefront of the U.S. Department of Energy’s management challenges for fiscal 2020, according to a Nov. 15 special report from DOE’s Office of Inspector General. Other major concerns include nuclear waste management, cybersecurity, safeguards and security of DOE installations, civilian stewardship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, […]

The Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will not be published Thursday in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Monday, Dec. 2.