Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Not all waste resulting from reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel should be considered high-level radioactive waste (HLW), the Energy Department reaffirmed Wednesday. Under its new interpretation, DOE says some lower-risk reprocessing waste can be deemed non-HLW and be disposed of according to its radiological traits rather than its point of origin. That could speed up […]

Eight Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump in a letter to extend the New START arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. New START went into effect in 2011. The Barack Obama administration proposed the treaty, which the then-Democrat-controlled Senate […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions is laying the groundwork to acquire the three custom-built gloveboxes needed for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Surplus Plutonium Disposition program: the proposed replacement for the cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. Under the currently unfunded and unauthorized program, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would install the gloveboxes at Savannah […]

National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia appointed D.E. “Dori” Ellis deputy director of the nation’s nuclear-weapons-technology lab, the Honeywell-owned lab-manager announced Wednesday. Ellis will be the lab’s No. 2 executive behind director Stephen Younger. She will replace David Douglass, who will retire in June, according to a lab press release. Ellis is a longtime […]

The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station shut down permanently late Friday afternoon. Entergy hopes by the end of the year to sell the Cape Cod property to Holtec International, which would assume all responsibility for cleanup and spent fuel management, along with the trust fund that will pay for the work. In 2015, the New Orleans-based power […]

The Waste Control Specialists (WCS) site in Andrews County, Texas is still an attractive potential home for thousands of metric tons of elemental mercury. That’s according to a supplemental analysis published Monday by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The document says facilities at WCS would still be a good option for storage of up to 6,800 […]

The Department of Energy authorized two transfers of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after that nation allegedly authorized the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Tuesday. Beginning in 2017, the Department of Energy granted seven companies Part 810 authorizations — named for the section of the […]

The long-anticipated start of a facility to treat sodium-bearing liquid radioactive and hazardous waste at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory recently took another step toward reality, Fluor Idaho said. The contractor said last week it finished a 50-day demonstration of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU). During the longest trial run to date the […]

Language in a fiscal 2020 spending package passed by the full House Appropriations Committee May 21 says the Energy Department should comply with prior consent decrees when it comes to remediation its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in California. A provision of the report accompanying the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will hold its next WIPP Town Hall briefing June 20 at 5:30 p.m. Pacific time at the Carlsbad, N.M., City Hall Annex on June 20. An agenda for the meeting will be released closer to the date, a city of Carlsbad representative said by email Monday. The […]

The Energy Department Friday published its justification for contracting a Centrus Energy subsidiary to demonstrate high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) production without competitive bidding. The federal government wants to deploy a 16-machine cascade at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio to demonstrate production of 19.75% enriched uranium fuel by June 2022 using domestic technology. Centrus’ American […]

The Department of Energy would no longer have to make 80 plutonium pits a year by the end of the next decade, if legislation unveiled Monday in the Democrat-controlled House becomes law. The legislation, due for a vote Tuesday by House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee “would repeal the requirement for the Secretary of Energy […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stared over the engineers’ shoulders of Southern California Edison and Holtec International International as they studied the effects of  scratches on eight fuel canisters at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). This was part of the NRC’s review of Southern California Edison’s (SCE) and Holtec’s remedial work stemming […]

Don’t expect another Senate-confirmed nominee during President Donald Trump’s current term to succeed Anne Marie White at the helm of the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management. That was the assessment offered Monday by several observers of the DOE weapons complex. The chances of the White House finding a qualified and willing candidate – and […]

Community reuse organizations designed to promote economic development at Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup sites got good news last month when the House Appropriations Committee voted to affirm their authority to receive and resell old equipment the federal agency no longer needs. The committee-approved $7.2 billion fiscal budget for the Office of Environmental Management makes it […]

Supporters of the departing Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White say she refocused the Energy Department’s $7 billion nuclear cleanup office on completing work, rather than just safely maintaining 16 Cold War sites. But when Energy Secretary Rick Perry confirmed in a Friday email to DOE staff White has resigned effective June 14, […]

Fluor Idaho expects to finish its work this month at the site of a radioactive waste sludge accident in April 2018 at the Idaho National Laboratory, the company informed state officials last week. Four 55-gallon drums of waste overheated and blew off their lids on April 11, 2018, hours after the contents were exposed to […]

The Department of Energy as of Thursday had neither officially confirmed nor denied widespread chatter regarding the resignation of Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White. A number of sources first said last week that White had been asked to step down after 14 months leading the office charged with cleanup of 16 radioactively […]

MOX Services will not receive any interest payments on $20 million in clawed-back fees the shrinking company won from the Department of Energy in a lawsuit over the agency’s cancellation of a controversial plutonium disposal plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler handed down the […]

Duke Energy on Thursday said it had selected a contractor to expedite decommissioning of its retired Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida. The power company now anticipates decommissioning will wrap up by 2027, decades earlier than the prior end date of 2074. Pending state and federal regulatory approval, Accelerated Decommissioning Partners, a team of […]

It should take anywhere from two to four weeks to fully analyze the Energy Department’s new sampling for radioactive contaminants at a middle school near the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The results should be publicly provided as soon as they are available, Pike County Health Commissioner Matt Brewster said in a Wednesday email. A team […]

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assesses Russia “probably is not adhering” fully to a multilateral prohibition on nuclear testing, the agency’s director said Wednesday. Speaking at a Hudson Institute event, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. argued Russia’s development of new nuclear warhead designs and overall stockpile management is enhanced by even low-yield nuclear testing. “The […]

South Carolina and the Department of Energy need at least another month to decide whether it is “feasible” to settle the state’s $100-million 2018 lawsuit over several metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium stranded at the Savannah River Site. “The parties continue to engage in discussions to determine whether it is feasible to resolve this matter […]

The Port Hope Project in April resumed remediation of radioactively contaminated properties in the municipality in Ontario, Canada. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ Port Hope Area Initiative is testing all private properties for low-level radioactive waste, left by uranium and radium refining during the 20th century. To date, roughly 1,000 sites are known to require remediation. The […]

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) on Wednesday placed blame squarely on Democrats for the ongoing freeze in licensing and then building a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. “The project boasts support in Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located. So why hasn’t it moved forward? Politics,” Barrasso wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. […]

Fluor is bringing back a retired chief financial officer, Michael Steuert, to permanently fill the role again as current CFO Bruce Stanski assists the Dallas-area company’s new chief executive with a strategic review. The international engineering, procurement, and construction company also announced Monday that Mark Fields will become the new president of its energy and […]