Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

A bill to reauthorize the Department of Energy’s West Valley Demonstration Project Act was reported out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a voice vote Tuesday. The measure was passed in a bloc of 20 bills considered at once by the panel, including committee Chair Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) Nuclear Energy Leadership Act. […]

The University of California expects to bank some $22.5 million in fees in 2019 for its part in managing the two main U.S. nuclear-weapon design laboratories, the university’s Board of Regents estimated in a document published Wednesday. The University of California (UC) is a senior partner on Triad National Security, which has managed the Los […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – New Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal said Tuesday she hopes to consider whether reviving long-dormant U.S. recycling of spent nuclear fuel could provide a feasible alternative to the federal government’s current plan to bury it underground forever. “I don’t think we have a waste issue. We have a treasure […]

ESCO Technologies earlier this month said it acquired Globe Composite Solutions, LLC, a provider of composite-based products for the Navy and defense industry customers, including for the Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear submarines. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Globe, which is based near Boston, is expected to have about $37 million in sales this year. Globe provides […]

A barrel of radioactively contaminated material at a Westinghouse Electric facility in Columbia, S.C., briefly ignited early Friday after becoming pressurized and popping off its lid, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported. The drum held mop heads, filters, and rags designated as “wet recoverable material,” along with laboratory waste, according to an NRC event notification […]

Centrus Energy expects the Department of Energy by Oct. 31 to finalize the company’s contract to build a new uranium enrichment cascade in Ohio, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A temporary DOE letter contract with the Bethesda, Md., nuclear fuel company’s American Centrifuge Operating Co. subsidiary authorizes $6.4 million […]

Marian Davis has resigned as chief financial officer of uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology company Centrus Energy Corp., according to a regulatory filing. Davis submitted her letter of resignation June 7 and was expected to leave the company after it filed its 10-Q report on quarterly earnings for the period ended June 30, according […]

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said Tuesday it had issued a three-year extension for a partnership encompassing 17 companies performing cleanup activities at the Sellafield nuclear site. The Decommissioning Delivery Partnership, formed in 2016, will now remain on the job at least through 2026, according to an NDA press release. The partnership to date […]

Southern California Edison (SCE) on Monday resumed transferring used reactor fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) into dry storage. The restart follows a nearly yearlong recovery from a high-profile mishap in moving one spent-fuel canister. On Aug. 3, 2018, the container of fuel assemblies became lodged on the shield ring of its […]

AECOM on Monday named a senior executive with the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to lead the international arm of the company’s Management Services nuclear and strategic environment branch. David Batters will join AECOM on Sept. 1 as senior vice president and international sector lead for the Management Services nuclear and environment unit. The […]

The U.S. Department of Energy wants negotiations to start soon with Washington state and the Environmental Protection Agency over updated plans for radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state. At the same time, the Energy Department said in a July 11 letter to Washington state Department of Ecology […]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has demanded the U.S. Supreme Court consider the case of South Carolina and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), which the state’s senior senator says has turned the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., into a permanent plutonium dumping ground. Graham made his argument in an amicus curiae brief filed […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a July 23 meeting in Harrisburg, Pa., to discuss Exelon’s approach for decommissioning the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power reactor. The Chicago-based power company is scheduled by Sept. 30 to retire the pressurized-water reactor near the state capital. In a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) submitted […]

U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said he used a meeting last week with U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Kristine Svinicki to renew his call for increased federal oversight at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). “As I told the chair, it is imperative that the NRC, Southern California Edison, and Holtec International take concrete […]

The head of corporate services for the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), Paul Bosco, is as of today back at his old job at the agency. Bosco, EM associate principal deputy assistant secretary for corporate services for less than a year, has rejoined DOE’s Office of Project Management as director. The move […]

The Savannah River Site’s security contractor earned $96.1 percent of its possible award fee from the U.S. Department of Energy for services provided during the first half of fiscal 2019. Centerra-Savannah River Site brought in just shy of $3.14 million, out of a potential $3.26 million for the period from Oct. 1, 2018, to March […]

The Z Pulsed Power Facility at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., was slated to come back online Wednesday after a serious accident in June knocked the facility out of commission for three weeks, a senior laboratory employee said this week. The June 17 accident, which shook Sandia’s high-energy density physics lab longer and […]

The head of the government-owned company that manages the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site is scheduled to step down in January 2020. Paul Foster has served as chief executive officer at Sellafield Ltd. since 2016, and has been at the site since 2000, according to an announcement Thursday. Sellafield Ltd. manages nuclear fuel reprocessing and […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week that Southern California Edison (SCE) has taken significant steps to address the failures that led to a mishap last year in the transfer of used fuel at its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). However, the agency also cited the utility for five minor violations of safety […]

Another member of the brain trust for former assistant energy secretary for environmental management Anne Marie White is rumored to be on the move. The head of corporate services at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), Paul Bosco, is apparently leaving his current post to take another position at the agency, two industry […]

Centrus Energy Corp. has started work on a next-generation uranium enrichment cascade that could give the company a leg up in the competition to build the next domestic enrichment facility for national defense, according to a document published Wednesday by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In a June 27 letter to the federal regulator, the […]

WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama administration’s National Nuclear Security Administration leadership duo whipped the Donald Trump administration here Tuesday to immediately extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and forget, for now, about modifying the pact. The bilateral treaty, which limits Moscow and Washington to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 […]

The Department of Energy acknowledged Wednesday that for six years it sent nuclear weapons waste to the Nevada National Security Site in violation of its waste acceptance criteria. The agency confirmed the information the same day Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) made it public in a press release. Senior DOE officials including Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, head of […]

As expected, Northrop Grumman on Tuesday said that its board has elected Kathy Warden as its chairman effective Aug. 1, adding to her current duties of president and CEO of the $30 billion defense company. Warden succeeds Wes Bush, who has been the company’s chairman since July 2011. Bush will resign from the board effective July […]

The Department of Energy is scheduled next week to send a cesium-137 source that contaminated a University of Washington building in May to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for “forensic analysis,” an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. Until then, the damaged irradiator’s cesium-137 source remains in the Research and Training Building near the university’s Harborview […]

Rita Baranwal is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday as assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the Department of Energy. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will handle the swearing-in ceremony, a DOE official said. An industry source said Baranwal has already started work, including receiving internal briefings. The Senate confirmed Baranwal on June 20, just over […]

Developmental nuclear power reactors do not provide an easy solution to management of the radioactive waste generated by the technology, according to a onetime head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Plans to revitalize US nuclear power, which is in dire economic straits, depend on the potential for new, ‘advanced’ reactors to reduce and recycle […]