Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Development of the nuclear warhead for the Air Force’s next cruise missile so far is not affected by the early parallel development of a sea-launched variant of the warhead for the Navy, the commander of the eighth Air Force said Wednesday. “I have not heard anything like that at all,” Major General Jason Armagost, commander […]

WASHINGTON — Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), chair of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee in the House, told the Exchange Monitor he does not know when a vote on the federal budget would be. “I have not been privy to that,” Fleischmann said here Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol. “But I sure wish we could’ve […]

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, will consider putting nuclear reactors under development at Terrestrial Energy, a Charlotte, N.C., on some of the Utah-based company’s sites, the companies said Wednesday. In a joint press release, the companies said they signed a memorandum of understanding “to collaborate on the siting and deployment of Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) […]

Virginia-based Amentum Holdings Monday announced the appointment of Darren Burton as its chief people officer of the publicly traded company with 53,000 employees spread across 80 countries. Burton has more than two decades of experience in corporate personnel management, Amentum said in a Monday press release. Burton’s most recent post was chief people officer at […]

Department of Energy management at the Savannah River Site told a federal safety watchdog last month steps are underway to strengthen oversight by departmental facility representatives at the nuclear complex in South Carolina. The DOE Office of Environmental Management is employing “trending analysis” and improving collaboration and training for its facility representatives at the Savannah […]

In a sort of paperwork anti-milestone, the Department of Energy last week asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate a materials license for an unbuilt nuclear fuel handling facility once planned for Butte County, Idaho. “The decision has been made that the facility will not be constructed and therefore the License should be terminated,” reads […]

Santa Fe County commissioners were scheduled to meet Wednesday with a coalition for the Caja del Rio plateau to discuss making the plateau near the Los Alamos National Laboratory a monument, one of them said Tuesday. Commissioner Anna Hansen told the Monitor about Wednesday’s scheduled meeting in an email the week after the local Santa […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Tuesday nominated Air Force Major General Mark Pye to take command of the Air Force Nuclear Systems Center in New Mexico as a lieutenant general. Pye, whose promotion requires Senate approval, is currently the director of programs at the office of the deputy chief of staff for plans and programs […]

Cotter Corporation and other defendants last week asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to reconsider whether litigation should be allowed to go forward by two sisters who blame their cancer on St. Louis area radioactive contamination dating to the Manhattan Project. The petition for rehearing was filed Nov. 27 by […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement Nov. 28 that Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants reduced electricity due to military activity targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. “Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is extremely fragile and vulnerable, putting nuclear safety at great risk,” Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said […]

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has refused a request by Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups to fix what they deem a mistake in an earlier ruling concerning a public hiking trail near where the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado once stood. Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and other plaintiffs asked […]

Members of Hanford Guards Union Local 21 want to quickly end a lockout initiated last week by the landlord contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a union official said Monday. Local 21 President Chris Hall told Exchange Monitor by phone the guards sought to keep working during contract talks with […]

Fluor’s longtime chief financial officer and executive vice president Joe Brennan plans to retire July 1, 2025 after more than three decades with the Irving, Texas-based government contractor. Fluor announced Brennan’s planned departure in a Monday press release, adding he will be replaced by the company’s chief accounting officer, John Regan. Regan, currently chief accounting […]

A 2023 ban on commercial interim storage was a judicial power grab that flouted the law and ignored the authority of other courts, according to a Monday Supreme Court brief. In its final brief before oral arguments scheduled for March, Interim Storage Partners (ISP) told the Supreme Court that the U.S. Fifth Circuit engaged in […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this month gave the formal go-ahead for stranded transuranic waste from the Los Alamos Laboratory to remain in commercial storage for another two years. NRC cleared Waste Control Specialists to hold on to the waste until Dec. 31, 2026, according to a letter dated Nov. 22 and posted online by the […]

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 […]