Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Like their beloved Buffalo Bills, workers for the Department of Energy and its cleanup contractor at the West Valley Demonstration Project in Western New York are not easily derailed by possible lake effect snow. “The snow was cleared last night and this morning; and we are operating under normal work hours,” a site spokesperson said […]

The BWX Technologies-led joint venture assuming responsibility for managing liquid waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has scheduled a couple of employee transition meetings for January. The sessions, announced in a Nov. 20 post on the Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) website, will be set for Jan. 15 […]

Members of the Hanford Guards Union Local 21 spent part of their Thanksgiving weekend picketing outside of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, following expiration of their labor agreement with the Leidos-led landlord contractor. Negotiators for the guards and site landlord, Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) are expected to resume talks Monday […]

Here are some events related to civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: 2024 December 04 – Holtec International. Open house about the planned restart of the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station. Palisades Joint Information Center, Benton Harbor, Mich. 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, U.S. 05 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Public meeting: “Briefing […]

Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the Township of Ignace will host a deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization announced Thursday. The Canadian agency made the announcement on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday only a few days after the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation gave its consent to host the repository. The […]

Lower disposal costs mean nuclear reactor operators will not need to keep as much cash on hand to cover the cost of end-of-life plant cleanup, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said last week. Two of the four U.S. disposal sites for low-level radioactive waste, the two used by most NRC licensees, are charging “moderately lower” rates […]

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, the Department of Energy kicked off its market research into the next environmental cleanup contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management published online a request for information/sources sought notice at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex in Western Kentucky. Responses to the Paducah Deactivation and […]

The federal government last week asked a judge to vacate a judgement favoring environmentalists in a plutonium pit lawsuit and stop the case from going to an appeals court. The defendants, the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), asked district judge Mary Geiger Lewis to vacate her Sept. 30 judgement […]

A local union leader is optimistic that plans for a nickel recovery facility at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio will go ahead, even though a chief congressional backer lost his reelection bid. Last month, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) announced the Department of Energy was entering a partnership with contractor Leidos and […]

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in March about the constitutionality of commercial interim storage of spent nuclear fuel, according to the court’s docket. Arguments were scheduled for March 5 in a consolidated case that will also give the high court a chance to consider the constitutionality of methods the state of Texas used […]

In response to a statement by a watchdog nuclear agency condemning its nuclear program, Iran’s state news agency reported Tehran started activating new advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges. According to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a joint statement Friday calling the International Atomic Energy […]

When it comes to overseeing billions of dollars’ worth of federal contracts, the Department of Energy, and its two nuclear weapons complex offices, still has work to do, a congressional watchdog agency said in a Thursday report. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said DOE, its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its Office of […]

Derek Merrin (R) a member of the Ohio legislature has formally conceded his race in Ohio’s 9th congressional district against Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the longest serving incumbents in congress. “The vote is we came about 2,300 votes short” after the provisional votes were counted in […]

More than half of the transuranic waste shipments hauled away from the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in fiscal 2024 came from plutonium downblending, a DOE spokesperson said last week. In response to an inquiry from Exchange Monitor, the spokesperson said via email that 35 of the 59 transuranic waste shipments sent to DOE’s  […]

A bill that would create a nuclear waste agency outside the Department of Energy has “good bones” and could be a rallying point for the nuclear industry, a federal official said Wednesday. The bill, filed Sept. 24 by Reps. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and August Pfleuger (R-Texas), is the latest legislative pitch to remove management of […]

Dallas-based Jacobs Solutions this week praised the Sept. 27 completion of the spinoff of its government contracting and cyber-intelligence businesses, which leaves Jacobs and its shareholders as key owners of the new publicly-traded Amentum Holdings. The September transition, known as a Reverse Morris Trust transaction, where some assets are moved to a third party, in […]

To contain the multibillion-dollar costs of cleaning up contaminated groundwater, the Department of Energy planned to implement recommendations from the Government Accountability Office by April 2027. Candice Trummel, senior advisor for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, informed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the decision in a letter appended to a GAO report released this […]

WASHINGTON — The head of the U.S. Strategic Command told the Exchange Monitor here Tuesday he could have public conversations in the spring on the nuclear employment guidance. The report, which the Pentagon said it submitted to Congress Nov. 14, describes the U.S. nuclear employment strategy in an unclassified format. “I’ll probably have conversations in […]

Republicans on Wednesday turned against President Joe Biden’s (D) nominee to fill the last vacancy on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the lame-duck Democratic majority got the President’s man to the floor. On a vote of 10-9, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans against, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved Matthew […]

Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based Boston Government Services has hired Bernie Boucher as its senior vice president for business development, the company said this week. After spending 21 years in the U.S. Army, Boucher was most recently a vice president with CACI International in Reston, Va. Boucher has also worked in a business development post with Northrop […]

In the only mention of high-level waste in a 72-page report a year in the marking, a state-chartered group on Monday said Texas should consider building a “nuclear recycling facility.”  “Texas should contemplate and discuss a state position on the development of a nuclear recycling facility to reduce high level radioactive waste in the U.S.,” […]

Having lost its request for an injunction blocking public access to a hiking trail on property once part of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, Physicians for Social Responsibility wants a federal court to revise part of its earlier order. The plaintiffs assert U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly was premature in approving “the […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration, in asking a court to deny an activist’s amicus brief in an ongoing lawsuit, said it conducted a review of producing warhead cores in New Mexico.  At the end of October, Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group in Albuquerque, N.M., filed a proposed amicus brief saying […]

With less than a month left to brief the court, attorneys for New York said the state’s ban on discharging irradiated water from shuttered nuclear plants does not violate federal law. For that reason, attorneys for the state said in a Nov. 8 court filing, the U.S. District Court for the New York Southern District […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration will conduct low-altitude helicopter flights starting Tuesday this week over Las Vegas, Nev. ahead of the city’s Grand Prix, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said. According to a post Monday from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on the website X, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will use […]