Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) anticipates within a matter of months further narrowing the number of locations being considered for a spent nuclear fuel disposal repository. “The NWMO is working to identify a single, preferred location for a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel, in an area with informed and willing hosts. There […]

A Colorado-based company has won a roughly $2.8 million litigation support contract for the U.S. Energy Department’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center. The Cincinnati-based procurement center for the DOE Office of Environmental Management published the award to TLI Solutions on Sept. 19. The contractor will support the EMCBC chief counsel in “simple and complex litigation” […]

Andrea Thompson, the State Department’s point person for nuclear arms control, has left her post after 15 months on the job, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced late last week. “Andrea Thompson is a dedicated public servant who brought over 25 years of military experience to her role at the [State Department],” Pompeo wrote Friday […]

General Dynamics Electric Boat broke ground on a new 200,000-square-foot facility on Sept. 13 that will be dedicated to building the new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. Called the South Yard Assembly Building (SYAB), it will be on 7 acres of the company’s property at its Groton, Conn., facility and is the largest company construction project in […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee wants additional cost information before Congress provides any more funding for the Department of Energy’s planned new landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. “The Committee is disappointed in the lack of progress in issuing the Record of Decision for the new landfill and recommends no funding to continue the […]

A longtime manager at the Department of Energy has been selected to lead fuel cycle and supply chain activities at the Office of Nuclear Energy. “I am pleased to announce that I have selected Andrew Griffith to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fuel Cycle and Supply Chain, NE-4. This reassignment is effective immediately,” according to […]

Three U.S. senators — two Democratic presidential candidates and one of the party’s premier nuclear doves — urged House and Senate lawmakers negotiating the final version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to tightly limit future U.S. production of plutonium nuclear-weapon cores. That is according to a letter dated Sept. 13 and delivered to […]

Appeals were filed Tuesday with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over which entities should be allowed to intervene legally in the federal licensing of a proposed site in western Texas for temporary storage of used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. On Aug. 23, an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that only the Sierra Club […]

The Department of Energy’s fiscal 2020 budget bill remained in legislative limbo in the Senate on Wednesday, after an essentially party-line fight over President Donald Trump’s planned southern-border wall. The motion to invoke cloture — a Senate parliamentary move that limits debate on a bill — failed 51-44, with only two Republicans voting no. One […]

Northrop Grumman on Wednesday announced changes to its organization and leadership it argued will better align portfolios. The company said there will be four modified operating sectors: Aeronautics Systems, Defense Systems, Mission Systems and Space Systems. Changes will be effective Jan. 1, 2020. Aeronautics Systems will be “an innovative manned and unmanned air system provider, with […]

The U.S. Energy Department plans to continue to pay Boeing for access to a federal facility being prepared for remediation within the aerospace giant’s property at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif. The access agreement with Boeing would otherwise expire Sept. 30. Energy Department Contracting Officer John Blecher on Monday signed off on […]

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The U.S. Air Force is considering whether to move funding from the B-1B Lancer program to buy additional next-generation B-21 bombers in the fiscal year 2021 budget, as changes are considered for the overall future of the aging bomber force. Accelerating procurement of the Northrop Grumman-developed B-21 Raider is a priority for the […]

A new federal lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protecting Agency (EPA) claims runoff from the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory is hurting water quality in Los Alamos County, N.M. The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in New Mexico against the EPA, agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, and EPA Region 6 Administrator Ken […]

As Congress moves to fund Department of Energy conversion of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) into a new nuclear-weapon parts plant, a federal attorney is urging the Supreme Court to bury a South Carolina lawsuit that sought to block the government from shuttering the facility. Redeploying the same legal argument that helped seal […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico is seeking a firm to monitor vapor levels around certain disposal areas. Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) on Monday issued an updated request for proposals at www.fbo.gov for a subcontractor to collect and report on material disposal area […]

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Keeping the threat of a bid protest in his back pocket, a Boeing Co. executive said here Tuesday the U.S. Air Force can save time and money building the next generation of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles by scrapping a competition in which only Northrop Grumman is competing. “What I am suggesting is […]

Staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects completion by 2021 of an overhaul of regulations covering nuclear power reactors making the transition from operations to decommissioning. That is two years later than anticipated when the NRC commissioners in 2014 told staff to proceed with the rulemaking, Bruce Watson, chief of the NRC’s Reactor Decommissioning […]

House lawmakers on Tuesday officially moved to start final negotiations with the Senate on the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, but partisan gridlock in the Senate threatened to limit progress on budget negotiations this week to a stopgap spending bill, or continuing resolution. The House late Tuesday queued up a vote for either Thursday or […]

The head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was briefly on President Donald Trump’s short list to replace John Bolton as national security adviser, media reported Tuesday. However, Trump on Wednesday announced via Twitter he had selected Robert O’Brien, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs at the State Department and a former […]

Power company Exelon has moved up the retirement date for its reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania to Friday, a senior U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said Tuesday. Reactor Unit 1 had been scheduled to close by Sept. 30. “We originally were told it would shut down by the end […]

The Colorado Department of Health and Environment expects the organization building a toll road near Denver to continue soil sampling around the site of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility and to submit its results by the end of the year. A soil sample taken by the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority in May […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is delaying roofing repairs at its H Canyon nuclear materials processing facility, after stating at the start of the year construction would begin around midsummer. Repairs on the leaky roof are scheduled to begin “later this year,” Monte Volk, a DOE spokesman at the 310-square-mile facility near Aiken, […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday affirmed that directives in recent years regarding disposal of very low-level radioactive waste (VLLW) do not apply to a facility operated by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) on its West Texas property. John Lubinski, director of the agency’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, was responding to a […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A draft environmental assessment on commercial disposal of up to 10,000 gallons of radioactive wastewater from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina could be issued for public comment by the end of 2019. The feedback to the draft assessment, under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, will help determine if […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The U.S. Energy Department’s top official at the Hanford Site in Washington state has a full plate these days. That includes preparing for potential turnover of four top contractors and gearing up for operation of the $17 billion Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) by 2023, Brian Vance, who manages both the Hanford Office […]