Publications: Morning Briefing

A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers on Tuesday introduced legislation intended to help the federal government finally build a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is a slightly updated version of legislation introduced in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That bill made it out of the […]

The Energy Department, possibly inching toward a draft solicitation, has posted a slew of documents related to the contract for environmental remediation at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. More than 50 documents were posted Friday to the website for DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center. They encompass the labor pact in place for current […]

A middle school near the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, will be closed until summer break due to concerns over levels of radioactive contaminants on the property. A local schools official said enriched uranium was identifeid inside Zahn’s Corner Middle School and neptutnium-237 was detected by a DOE air monitor adjacent to […]

The Department of Energy is still waiting on action from Congress that would be necessary to carry out its legal requirement to dispose of the nation’s Greater-Than-Class C (GTCC) low-level radioactive waste, a senior official said last week. The agency has largely been in a holding pattern since issuing a November 2017 report to Congress […]

The Department of Homeland Security should pay closer attention to how cities are spending federal dollars earmarked for an anti-nuclear-terrorism program, the Government Accountability Office said Monday. The DHS Securing the Cities program began in 2006 and helps municipalities develop plans to prevent and respond to acts of radiological terror, including deployment of the radiological […]

Oral arguments are set for May 23 between the contractor for the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) and its customer, the National Nuclear Security Administration, over some $800,000 in interest the contractor says it is owed. CB&I Areva MOX Services sued the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in 2016, and repeatedly afterward in […]

WASHINGTON — Plans for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors raise questions about the ultimate disposition of that radioactive material once a facility’s federal license expires, former Nuclear Regulatory Chairman Gregory Jaczko said Monday. Speaking at a Capitol Hill event on nuclear decommissioning, Jaczko posited a scenario in which the […]

On April 30, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) hit the one-year mark as the cleanup vendor for legacy waste at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. N3B is tasked with environmental remediation at the 34-square-mile federal property, along with preparing radioactive waste for disposal off-site. It sent the first […]

The federal government is not likely ever to secure local consent for disposal of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors, but that approach could nonetheless be tested in a plan for temporary storage of the radioactive material, according to a former head of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). “Consent-based siting […]

Boeing’s contract to build the tail kit that will guide the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb during free fall is worth $215 million over four years, according to an Air Force procurement document released last week. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida released the initial funds for the sole-source […]

The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) should complete its transuranic waste processing mission this summer, although some work remains beyond fiscal 2019. Roughly 6,500 cubic meters of material, or about 10% of the original total, still requires certification and transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee is scheduled Wednesday to mark up a $46.5 billion spending bill that will include the panel’s proposed fiscal 2020 budget for the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In a subcommittee markup, appropriators typically reveal only a summary of their proposed bill before voting to send […]

A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has scheduled a data-gathering meeting for May 16 near the Hanford Site in Washington state. This will be the panel’s sixth meeting the committee to study supplemental treatment of low-activity radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Waste Treatment Plant being […]

The Volpentest Hazardous Materials and Emergency Response (HAMMER) Federal Training Center at the Hanford Site in Washington state has reached 2 million work hours without a lost workday injury, contractor Mission Support Alliance and the Department of Energy announced Friday. The safety milestone took about eight years to achieve. It was reached as the training […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has delayed completion of the draft record of decision on a proposed new landfill facility for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee until August. Previously, the draft ROD was expected May 7. State and federal regulators approved a three-month extension for submitting thedocument for the proposed Environmental Management […]

The next contract for the U.S. Navy’s program to build its fleet of Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines will be the Block I construction contract, according to program manager Capt. John Rucker. That is expected to cover the first two boats. “[W]e will award that no later than Oct. 1, 2019, to build the ships on […]

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The Navy’s top acquisitions official said Tuesday the Navy’s concern with maintaining the Columbia-class ballistic missile (SSBN) submarine schedule margin is focused on the overall submarine cadence, but if issues emerge the Navy will focus on the SSBN over attack submarines. Last week the Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer and Chief of […]

The California Coastal Commission is tentatively scheduled in June to consider a permit that would allow major decommissioning to begin at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). “Commission staff is presently planning on the item being heard at the Commission’s June meeting, but this schedule is not final and could be subject to change […]

Officials from the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the New Mexico Environment Department are set to meet in July to discuss legacy nuclear-waste-cleanup priorities for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2020, the chair of an agency-funded advisory group said Wednesday. “The [New Mexico] Environmental Department and Los Alamos [Environmental Management] begin their […]

An article in the Wednesday edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing should have said that J. L. Shepherd and Associates manufactured the cesium blood irradiator removed from a University of Washington building, and that a DOE Radiological Assistance Program crew from Richland, Wash., responded to the contamination incident that arose from the machine’s attempted transport off-site.

Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Thursday that revenue in the first quarter of 2019 dropped by $1 million from the prior year, as the company’s services branch hit a lull in business. The Atlanta-based nuclear services provider said revenue fell from $12.7 million in first-quarter 2018 to $11.7 million in its latest earnings period. That generated […]

The Department of Energy and two companies have agreed to carry out “remedial design” for the cleanup approach selected by the Environmental Protection Agency for the radioactively contaminated area of the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. The Energy Department, Bridgeton Landfill LLC, and Cotter Corp. are the potentially responsible parties for the EPA Superfund […]

WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will be late with initial deliveries to the Pentagon of two refurbished nuclear weapons, the head of the semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency said here Wednesday. The Air Force was supposed to get its refurbished B61, to be called B61-12, in 2020. The Navy was supposed to get its […]

The U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday it has contracted five small businesses to provide $24.9 million worth of demolition and other cleanup services for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The selected companies are: Aerostar SES, of Oak Ridge; ARS Aleut Remediation, of Port Allen, La.; CTI and Associates, of Knoxville, Tenn.; GEM Technologies, […]

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The program manager for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines said Tuesday while the boats have almost no margin for delays, he believes the submarines will be ready in time and that additional inspections of suppliers will continue. At the top of his presentation here at the Navy league’s annual Sea Air Space Expo, […]

The U.S. Congress would be officially in favor of extending the New START nuclear-arms-control treaty, if  bipartisan legislation introduced Wednesday in the House becomes law. The bill from Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chair and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would if signed by President Donald Trump make […]

The management and operations contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina has hired 900 employees to date in fiscal 2019, part of its efforts to offset workforce attrition and to ramp up current and upcoming missions. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) plans to hire up to 300 more workers before the fiscal year […]