Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

The Department of Energy is bidding adieu to its Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office in Washington state effective Oct. 1, DOE’s manager for the Hanford Site said Tuesday. “We are going to be the Hanford Field Office, it’s going to be a new name,” Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board Tuesday evening. […]

Congressman Joe Wilson, 77, whose district abuts the Savannah River Site, was hospitalized in Washington Tuesday night after taking ill, according to his office’s post on website X. Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) son, South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson, said on the website X that the congressman was experiencing “stroke-like symptoms,” according to doctors at […]

WASHINGTON — House speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced Wednesday in Washington that he was pulling his stopgap six-month GOP spending bill that would extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets from its scheduled House floor vote. The bill was mostly clean for the Department of Energy aside from an anomaly that grants the agency permission “to sustain […]

A federal advisory panel heard Tuesday the Department of Energy’s top manager at the Hanford Site in Washington state still expects to start making test glass in November from a simulant designed to mimic low-level radioactive tank waste. DOE site manager Brian Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board cold commissioning of the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste […]

WASHINGTON — In a committee hearing here Wednesday about his nomination to join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Matthew Marzano said he agreed with a sometimes controversial commission’s decision to require fresh environmental reviews to relicense a nuclear power plant. “I think what the commission did in that case was appropriate,” Marzano said in response to […]

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency told the agency’s board of governors that ensuring nuclear safety in Ukraine and Russia was “extremely challenging,” an agency press release said Monday. Director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi traveled to the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine Sept. 4 to […]

The House speaker’s plan to extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets into the first six months of fiscal year 2025 faced more opposition Tuesday from inside and outside of his own party. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a letter to congressional appropriators, dated Sept. 7, that a six-month continuing resolution would put the schedule […]

A federal judge on Monday ruled that a team led by BWX Technologies should keep the long-term, multibillion-dollar liquid waste contract twice awarded to it by the Department of Energy. The ruling was made under seal, so the judge’s reasoning in the case, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, was not public as […]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time planned to hold a nomination hearing about a nuclear engineer tapped to become a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The committee planned to stream the nomination hearing online at its website.  Matthew Marzano, nominated by President Joe Biden (D) in July, would […]

Anti-nuclear groups in Tennessee and elsewhere have filed a formal “notice of intent to sue” with the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging violations of the Superfund law at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. Attorneys for the Foundation for Global Sustainability, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning and […]

Companies that want to run the Department of Energy’s National Training Center will wait until November to hear the Government Accountability Office’s decision about a summer protest by the incumbent, which has now gotten another extension at the Albuquerque, N.M. site. In 2023, three small businesses protested the DOE’s 2022 award to Eagle Harbor to […]

President Joe Biden (D) would veto a Republican-authored bill to extend federal agencies’ 2024 budgets into the first six months of fiscal year 2025, according to a Monday statement. The bill, H.R. 9494 Continuing Appropriations and Other Matters Act for 2025, would make only one exception to 2024 budget for the Department of Energy by […]

After three years of litigation, the Department of Energy and the administration of Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) settled on a new agreement for cleaning up legacy radioactive waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The New Mexico Environment Department announced the agreement last week in a press release. The new accord bears some […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office will by January 2026 evaluate the effectiveness of nine citizen-staffed boards that provide non-binding advice to the agency, the office said in a report published Monday. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) mentioned the review in a letter appended to a report published Monday by the Government Accountability […]

Consolidated Nuclear Security seeks information from entities interested in delivering a vacuum arc remelt furnace to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a Thursday notice said. According to the notice, responses by interested parties are due by Sept. 30. Site prime Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) would use the […]

A member of the House subcommittee on strategic forces said Friday that the U.S. and allies must invest in its nuclear arms and missile defense to keep up with adversaries. “Every nuclear state run by an authoritarian regime is heavily increasing its weapons and capabilities,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said in the opening sentence to […]

The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit is again solidifying sodium-bearing liquid waste at the Idaho National Laboratory, a Department of Energy spokesperson said Thursday in an email. “During maintenance, engineers replaced granulated activated carbon beds, which remove mercury during the waste treatment process, replaced process gas filter bundles, and completed minor maintenance operations,” the spokesperson wrote […]

Here are some events related to civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 2024: September 09, week of: Congress returns to session in Washington. Lawmakers must pass spending bills for fiscal year 2025 by Sept. 30 to prevent a partial government shutdown. 10: Hybrid meeting: The Hanford Advisory Board  holds a […]

Charles McMillan, 69, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, died Friday morning, Sept. 6, in a car crash in New Mexico, people familiar with the situation told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. The Los Alamos National Laboratory acknowledged McMillan’s passing Friday in a statement posted to the social media sites LinkedIn and Facebook. […]

A Chinese defense spokesperson said the U.S. should “substantially” reduce its nuclear arsenal and hold off on extending nuclear deterrence, state media said last week. “China pursues a self-defense strategy and maintains its nuclear force at the minimum level required for national security,”Wu Qian, Chinese ministry national defense spokesperson, said, according to Chinese state news […]

Orano-USA on Wednesday said the company could build a uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., using some state funding and Department of Energy land. The planned, “multi-billion dollar” 750,000 square-foot facility will employ about 300 people in Roane County, Tenn., according to a press release from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. […]

Patricia Lee, former manager of Savannah River National Laboratory, was sworn in Wednesday as the newest member of the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the agency said. The Senate confirmed Lee July 9 in a 54-41 vote, mostly on party lines. Her term runs through Oct. 18, 2027. Lee has over 30 years of […]

A Senate committee on Sept. 11 will hold a hearing to consider the nomination of Senate staffer and nuclear engineer Matthew Marzano to fill the last open slot on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Marzano is currently detailed as an advisor from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National […]

Supreme Court justices were scheduled Sept. 30 to consider requests to overturn a ban on the private interim storage of spent nuclear fuel, according to a notice published Wednesday. The two requests stem from a 2023 decision in a lawsuit filed by Texas in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that voided a Nuclear […]

The American Nuclear Society is “unconvinced” that high-assay low-enriched uranium could lead to a surge in weapons proliferation, the group said in an open letter to Science Magazine. “The implied recommendation that the United States should unilaterally decide international nuclear security policy by domestically lowering the enrichment threshold for commercial uranium fuel is particularly problematic,” […]