Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

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 […]

“Regulatory impedance” is among the challenges facing the new nuclear renaissance, the chief executive officer of BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., said Monday at a professional conference. “For whatever reason, western nations, developed economies, develop maybe a little bit of a fetish around regulation, control oversight, audit,” Rex Geveden, the BWX Technologies (BWXT) chief, said in […]

It’s not exactly radioactive waste definitions for dummies, but a National Governors Association task force has produced a document to help state and federal agencies stay on the same page when discussing cleanup of government nuclear weapons testing and production. “The purpose of this document is to help states impacted by cleanup at U.S. Department […]

Hurricane Helene gave the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management one last emergency to deal with at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina before turning over control of the property to the National Nuclear Security Administration, a cleanup manager said Monday. Hurricane Helene “made for an interesting final weekend” before the cleanup office […]

The federal government should pay $145 million for failing to remove spent nuclear fuel from three shuttered New England power plants over five years, court papers filed last week show. The payment, jointly agreed to by the plant operators and federal officials, must still be approved by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The government […]

Military activities are targeting Ukraine’s energy and nuclear infrastructure, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement Saturday. Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said in the statement that the Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and South Ukraine nuclear power plants were not directly impacted nor did they shut down, but their […]

A little more than two weeks after Republicans swept into power in Washington, Matthew Marzano, a Democratic Senate staffer and licensed reactor operator, will get the first of two lame-duck votes he must pass in order to become a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Marzano was scheduled for a vote during a business session […]

Here are some events related to civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week: November 17-20 – American Nuclear Society. 2024 Winter Conference and Expo. Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld, Orlando, Fla. Rex Geveden Chief Executive Officer of BWX Technologies, to speak on Monday’s opening plenary session. 18-19 – Savannah River Site Environmental […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 29 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during October, according to figures posted on the facility’s public website. There were 24 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory, four from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and one from the Los Alamos National Laboratory […]

Multiple national news organizations reported Saturday President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate Chris Wright, CEO and founder of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based oilfield services company, to be the next secretary of energy. According to his Liberty biography, Wright is a self-described “tech nerd” who previously founded Pinnacle Technologies in the 1990s, a company involved in […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage Nov. 1 at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1, the quasi-government corporation announced last week. A Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) spokesperson told the Monitor in an email that tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) are “loaded during a refueling outage, irradiated during one cycle, […]