Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

ARLINGTON, VA — The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch is about a third smaller than it was a few years ago, although more people could be brought on following a pending regional reorganization. “You know today we are at about 820 federal employees,” Tim Walsh, the head of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said […]

WASHINGTON – The Department of Energy could consider using the Nuclear Waste Fund to help fund waste management-related facilities to go online at Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. During the House Energy and Commerce’s Energy subcommittee hearing Tuesday, DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Ted Garrish told the panel that the department and Congress need to […]

Energy Secretary Chris Wright continues to call on Iran to fall in line with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards agreement in a Monday speech. Wright told the IAEA’s General Conference in Vienna, Austria, that Iran’s lack of transparency and failure to abide by the NPT-required safeguards has been “unacceptable.” […]

The Air Force and Northrop Grumman Monday said they have completed a full assembly of the LGM-35A Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in its “operational orientation,” setting the stage for initial flight testing in 2027. The “vertical stacking” demonstration at Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), Calif. was completed in parallel with a critical design […]

ARLINGTON – The head of the Department of Energy’s $8-billion nuclear cleanup branch said here Tuesday the Office of Environmental Management (EM) is indeed being renamed. In his “State of EM” speech, Walsh again said the Environmental Management office is being rebranded as the “Office of Nuclear Restoration and Revitalization. His remarks came at the […]

ARLINGTON, Va. – The biggest challenge for the National Nuclear Security Administration is receiving “stable, predictable, sufficient, timely funding” from Congress, Thomas Ashlock, the agency’s associate administrator for congressional and intergovernmental affairs, said Tuesday. “Everyone would agree that a CR [continuing resolution] is not good,” Ashlock said, referring to a short-term stopgap spending bill that […]

The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at Idaho National Laboratory is still in an outage that began in June, a Department of Energy spokesperson said Monday. “The IWTU entered a scheduled outage in early June to replace the facility’s process gas filters,” the DOE spokesperson said in a Monday email reply to an Exchange Monitor […]

The New Mexico State Land Office issued an executive order Sept. 4 that would ban any new uranium mining activities in the state. The order, issued by New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, pushes for the state agency to prioritize nuclear cleanup at legacy uranium sites, according to a press statement. It will also […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released more overarching regulations in its latest rulemaking that will affect decommissioning, reactor licensing and oversight. Proposed on Sept. 11, the newest rulemaking in the NRC’s regulations as a part of Executive Order 14300 implementation. The 339-page proposal will have changes that are “intended to make NRC regulations more efficient, predictable […]

The United States would be willing to provide nuclear fuel to Iran if Tehran resolves concerns surrounding its nuclear program, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, potentially offering a path for civilian nuclear cooperation. Wright reportedly told Bloomberg that the U.S. could provide Iran with nuclear fuel from outside the country. He tied the proposal to […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency has resolved outstanding safeguards questions concerning Syria’s past nuclear activities after Damascus provided the agency with access and information, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Sept. 14. Grossi told the IAEA’s General Conference in Vienna that the development resolves a safeguards matter that had remained open for nearly two decades […]

Berkeley, Calif.-based small modular reactor developer Deep Fission installed and retrieved its full-size prototype reactor canister from a borehole in Kansas, the company said Sept. 10. According to the company’s press release, Deep Fission’s workers lowered its 20-foot canister to 100 feet below ground in a 34-inch wide borehole and then brought it back up […]

Tim Walsh, the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for Environmental Management, or EM-1, is one of the headline speakers for this week’s National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Va, and he could update key front-burner issues facing the nuclear cleanup branch. In March, Walsh told the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix that EM could soon be […]

The Baltimore District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently announced it has finished decommissioning and tearing down the 1950s era nuclear power reactor at Fort Belvoir, Va. In a Sept. 10 news release, the Corps said it has finished dismantling the SM-1 Former Nuclear Power Plant, near the Potomac River, about 20 miles […]

Torrance, Calif.-based Antares Nuclear was awarded $161 million by the U.S. Air Force last week to advance its nuclear reactor technology for space applications. The Air Force award to Antares represents the largest Department of Defense contract for space nuclear power so far, according to the company’s Sept. 11 press release.  Under the program, the […]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’’s Energy subcommittee plans a Tuesday hearing on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses that would co-locate fuel cycle activities with advanced nuclear energy projects.  Announced Sept. 8, the hearing, titled: “Nuclear Spent Fuel Policy: Examining Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses”, will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m. Eastern […]

The area around the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Western Kentucky experienced a rare event last month that some headline writers dubbed a “quake-nado,” in which a tornado and an earthquake strike at the same time. The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a 2.5 magnitude earthquake centered in Massac, Ky., about eight miles from Paducah, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has removed all high-risk cesium-137 from Vermont, making it the 15th U.S. state or territory declared free of high-risk quantities of the radioactive material. This follows a July operation in which a team from Idaho National Laboratory removed a self-shielded cesium irradiator from the University of Vermont in Burlington […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recovered about $1.4 billion in indirect costs in fiscal 2024 from work it performed for outside partners, helping offset the costs of maintaining facilities and infrastructure, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). NNSA’s eight contractor-operated laboratories, plants and sites conducted nearly $15 billion in Strategic Partnership Projects (SPP) […]

Here are events related to nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking:  September: 15: Workshop: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds its annual data science and artificial intelligence workshop starting at 9 a.m. E.T. at NRC headquarters in Rockville, MD. 15-16: Conference: The Department of Energy’s National Cleanup Workshop hosted by the Energy Communities Alliance […]

Although the maintenance program at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site tank farms and liquid waste facilities is satisfactory, there are a couple of issues that demand attention, according to a recent DOE report. The facilities at the complex are overseen by BWX Technologies-led contractor Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C), which needs to […]

The United States Navy is in the mix of using advanced nuclear energy power naval installations, selecting Naval Weapons Station Crane in Indiana to be the first base to use the technology. The Department of Defense (DoD) said in its Wednesday press release the project will be completed in collaboration with the Army’s Janus program; […]

West Virginia has been selected as a finalist to host a nuclear campus under a high-profile Department of Energy program Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) announced in a Tuesday press conference. West Virginia is now the sixth state to be considered to host a nuclear lifecycle innovation campus, joining Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah, which […]

Although the maintenance program at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site tank farms and liquid waste facilities is satisfactory, there are a couple of issues that demand attention, according to a recent DOE report. The facilities at the complex are overseen by BWX Technologies-led contractor Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C), which needs to […]

North Korea has built a new uranium enrichment facility at its Yongbyon nuclear complex capable of housing up to 28 centrifuge cascades, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in an Aug. 28 report. The IAEA identified a new two-story building at Yongbyon as the site’s second uranium enrichment facility by comparing satellite imagery with […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has approved the next major phase for modernizing the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), allowing the project to advance into design for replacing aging accelerator systems. NNSA said in a Wednesday press release it approved Critical Decision 1 (CD-1) – meaning it gave the green light to proceed from […]

The Department of Energy’s cleanup contractor for Los Alamos National Laboratory recently drilled a borehole more than 1,000-feet deep for a new groundwater monitoring well to help keep tabs on a hexavalent chromium plume. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced Sept. 1 that legacy cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) had finished drilling […]