Publications: Morning Briefing

The House Appropriations Committee this morning will resume the debate over funding licensing of a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The fiscal 2020 energy and water development bill scheduled to be marked up in committee starting at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time zeroes out the White House request for roughly $150 million for licensing […]

A 2020 spending proposal from the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee directs the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to tap the independent group of JASON scientists for at least one, and perhaps two, new studies. After the Pentagon ditched the JASON contract in April following more than 50 years, the NNSA picked up […]

A proposed nuclear weapons budget due for a committee vote in the House of Representatives today would tap the brakes forcefully on the next intercontinental ballistic missile warhead and sharply curtail another pair of nuclear weapons programs. That is according to a detailed bill report released Monday by the House Appropriations energy and water development […]

The Pike County, Ohio, General Health District hopes this week to select a third-party laboratory to conduct air and water sampling near the Energy Department facility suspected of being the source of radioactive contaminants found recently at a local middle school. “We are working as fast as possible along with performing our due diligence to […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday announced it would collect $782.5 million in licensee fees for the current federal fiscal 2019 budget year, a slight bump up from the amount proposed earlier in the year. The final fee rule will take effect on July 16, according to a notice in the Federal Register. By […]

Former Kennewick, Wash., mayor and Hanford Site executive Steve Young died Thursday at the age of 69 from complications from cancer. Young was a four-term mayor of the city near Hanford. He was serving as a city councilman and had filed for re-election. He was also vice chairman of the Energy Communities Alliance, a Washington, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration gave the go-ahead for the roughly $145 million High Explosive Pressing Facility at the Pantex Plant to begin full-scale operations, according to a Thursday press release from the semi-autonomous DOE nuclear weapons agency. The facility can press some 2,500 pounds of conventional high explosives a year, and up to 500 […]

Westinghouse Electric announced Thursday it will change CEOs this summer. After 11 years with Westinghouse, José Emeterio Gutiérrez will resign as president and CEO effective July 31 and will be succeeded Aug. 19 by Patrick Fragman, group senior vice president at ABB Limited, an international technology company involved with electrification, industrial automation, and other fields. […]

On Friday, a U.S. attorney representing the National Nuclear Security Administration in a contractor lawsuit appealed a court decision to let some 20 MOX Services employees retain access to vital project information about cancelled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. The federal government had not filed its appeal with the U.S. Court of […]

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee recommends funding the Navy’s analysis of alternatives (AoA) for a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), but has concerns and directs the Secretary of the Navy to submit a report estimating costs. The subcommittee marked up a draft FY 2020 defense appropriations bill on May 16, making recommendations to the […]

Radioactive contamination was found in radiologically controlled areas of the 324 Building at the Hanford Site in Washington state, Department of Energy management told employees Thursday following broadcast media reports on the situation. In a message at the close of business, Hanford Manager Brian Vance said precautions, such as requiring respirators, have been taken to […]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is among a growing list of presidential candidates voicing opposition to disposal of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. “Trump is proposing to send our nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain,” Sanders tweeted on May 16. “That would be a disaster. We must stop building new nuclear power plants, and find […]

WASHINGTON — The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee on Wednesday sent the first draft of the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2020 budget bill to the full Appropriations Committee for consideration next week. The subcommittee will reveal its preferred spending levels for key programs in a detailed bill report to be published Monday, a […]

Local authorities near the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in southern Ohio say research by Northern Arizona University supports their concerns about radioactive contamination at a nearby middle school. There is “a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex is the source of enriched uranium and neptunium-237 found around Zahn’s Corner […]

International Isotopes on Wednesday confirmed its role in an accident two weeks ago that contaminated more than a dozen people with cesium-137 during the Department of Energy-funded removal of a blood-irradiation machine from a research facility at the University of Washington. “On May 3, 2019, our radiological services team was involved in a contamination event […]

The Pentagon announced May 15 that Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Donovan will become acting secretary effective June 1, following the resignation of current Secretary Heather Wilson. Donovan was widely expected to take over leadership of the service after Wilson announced her planed resignation effective May 31 to become the president of the University of Texas […]

Despite complaints from two senior Republicans, the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee on Wednesday signed off on a new spending bill that would provide no money for licensing the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The $46.4 billion energy and water appropriations legislation for fiscal 2020, filed Tuesday, includes funding for the […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management could issue a half-dozen major contract awards, collectively worth up to $35 billion, by the end of 2019. The office’s ’s latest procurement schedule, dated May 10, outlines an ambitious schedule of contract deals this year. Environmental Management updates its timelines every few months and the target dates […]

The company that manages the Savannah River Site in South Carolina approved $8.5 million worth of improper invoices from one of its subcontractors from October 2014 to June 2016, according to a new Department of Energy audit. That amount, which includes filings for information technology goods and services, represented 95 percent of the $9 million in […]

The House Appropriations Committee appears ready to reject the Trump administration’s request to transfer a nuclear cleanup program from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy. In its spending legislation for fiscal 2020, released Tuesday, the panel’s energy and water development subcommittee proposed $155 million for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has taken custody of some 700 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the United Kingdom, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said last week. The material, shipped to the U.S. from the U.K.’s Dounreay nuclear decommissioning site beginning in 2016, was at Oak Ridge awaiting downblending […]

The Energy Department contractor for the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state won 75% of its available fee, $345,810 of a potential $461,080, in its latest six-month performance scorecard. Contractor CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley (CHBWV) recorded no significant achievements or deficiencies during the period from Aug. 29, 2018, through Feb. 28 of […]

Local officials around Pike County, Ohio, met Monday with the head of the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management to discuss apparent radiological contamination at a middle school adjacent to the Portsmouth Site. During the meeting, DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said the agency won’t suspend construction of the on-site […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee sliced $600 million from the Donald Trump administration’s 2020 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in a spending bill unveiled Tuesday. If signed into law, the energy and water appropriations legislation would give the semiautonomous Department of Energy branch around $15.9 billion for the fiscal year […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has postponed its scheduled May 22 public hearing in Washington, D.C., on past radioactive waste accidents at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory and its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. In a notice on its website, the DNFSB said the half-day public hearing is being rescheduled […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s initial fiscal 2020 funding bill for energy and water development operations would sustain funding for the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office at nearly $7.2 billion. While even with current funding, that would be $706 million more than the Trump administration proposed in March for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The White […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s draft fiscal 2020 energy and water bill provides no money to resume federal licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Instead, the legislation would provide an unspecified appropriation for initial interim storage operations for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, according to a press release from […]