Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

After House leadership said the chamber could vote on a federal spending bill, the leader of the Democrat-controlled Senate said the upper chamber will not pass a six-month extension of 2024 federal budgets. The House schedule, posted by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the majority leader, said that “an item related to government funding may be […]

A federal judge last week gave the Department of Energy and the former operators of three shuttered New England Power Plants until January to settle their differences in a lawsuit of the agency’s latest failure to take custody of the plants’ spent fuel. On Friday, at the request of both parties, a request the Yankee […]

In court papers last week, a federal judge declined to stop construction of a walking trail that environmentalists said could endanger hikers near the demolished Rocky Flats plutonium pit factory in Colorado. Workers had planned to break ground on parts of a pedestrian bridge and underpass on Sept. 9 and the U.S. District Court for […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 50 shipments of transuranic waste during August, according to DOE’s public website. Leading the shipments again was the Idaho National Laboratory, accounting for 36 of the month’s 50 shipments. Savannah River Site sent seven, Los Alamos sent five, and the Oak Ridge National […]

The Savannah River National Laboratory will this week formally begin its search for a new lab director, a Department of Energy official said Monday at a public meeting in South Carolina.  DOE’s Office of Environmental Management will post a job announcement seeking a replacement for Majidi this week, Edwin Deshong, EM’s deputy manager the Savannah […]

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who collapsed at an event in Washington last week, got a pacemaker and can return to his duties on Capitol Hill, he said Monday in a video message. “With the pacemaker implant, issues have been now resolved for my public service,” Wilson said in a recorded video statement posted Monday to […]

An ambassador from the International Atomic Energy Agency advocated in a statement last week for a Middle East free of “weapons of mass destruction” and for more safeguards there. “We remain committed to working with the regional states to advance this goal in an inclusive, consensus-based manner that takes into account the legitimate regional security […]

Here are some events related to civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week. 17: Public meeting: Savannah River Citizens Advisory Board. 1:00 p.m. Eastern time.  University of South Carolina, Close-Hipp Building, 1705 College Street, Columbia, S.C. 29208. Streaming on YouTube. 17-18: Conference: The National Cleanup Workshop program, which runs for two […]

The 10th annual National Cleanup Workshop, an annual gathering of Department of Energy nuclear-weapons-cleanup officials and contractors, will be held in Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington. The annual gathering is hosted by the Washington-based Energy Communities Alliance, a group that represents the interests of people and local governments near DOE nuclear-weapons sites. After a […]

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 […]