Los Alamos National Laboratory

The comment period for the Los Alamos National Laboratory Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project Draft Environmental Assessment opens Dec. 19 and runs through Jan. 17.    The draft assessment analyzes the construction and operation of a new 115 kilovolt power transmission line and upgrades to the lab’s existing electrical infrastructure.  “Los Alamos requires a reliable and […]

The race to build 80 nuclear weapon cores per year is stretching the U.S. supply of gloveboxes used to keep engineers radiation-free while manipulating plutonium and other hazardous materials.  The equipment is becoming difficult to source, Michael Robinson, vice president of project management for Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) earlier this month said at the Energy […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s drive to make new nuclear-weapon cores has delayed disposal of old ones, according to an agency statement emailed to the Exchange Monitor on Tuesday. Amid the expansion of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility and early work on South Carolina’s planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, which combined are supposed […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s drive to make new nuclear-weapon cores has delayed disposal of old ones, according to an agency statement emailed to the Exchange Monitor on Tuesday. Amid the expansion of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Facility and early work on South Carolina’s planned Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, which combined […]

Despite worries within the nuclear security enterprise of “massive uncertainties” in its delivery date, the Scorpius x-ray imager might actually be ready later this decade, a spokesperson for the Sandia National Laboratories said last week. “The deterministic date…is to have Scorpius operational before the end of calendar 2027, with subcritical experiments to start in calendar […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said recently it has completed the multi-million-dollar remediation of Middle DP Road in Los Alamos County. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) said late last month that recent sampling confirmed “contamination removal and cleanup is complete,” according to […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration did not consider certain cost and radioactive waste analyses when it decided to make plutonium pits in New Mexico and South Carolina, the agency said in a court filing this week.  It is the latest turn in a two-year-old lawsuit filed in the federal district court for South Carolina in […]

The Department of Energy and its New Mexico regulator could be close to reaching a deal to replace the 2016 Compliance Order on Consent that governs most cleanup at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a federal court filing this week. The parties Tuesday sought and received an extension from a federal judge in […]

The Department of Energy and its New Mexico regulator could be close to reaching a deal to replace the 2016 Compliance Order on Consent that governs most cleanup at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a federal court filing this week. The parties Tuesday sought and received an extension from a federal judge in […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said recently it has completed the multi-million-dollar remediation of Middle DP Road in Los Alamos County. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) said late last month that recent sampling confirmed “contamination removal and cleanup is complete,” according to […]

KNOXVILLE – More than half of the employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office, which encompasses both the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the Pantex Plant in Texas, have been working for the nuclear enterprise for less than five years, according to agency and contractor officials. There are about 12,000 employees […]

KNOXVILLE – More than half of the employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office, which encompasses both the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the Pantex Plant in Texas, have been working for the nuclear enterprise for less than five years, according to agency and contractor officials. There are about 12,000 employees […]

KNOXVILLE — Design of the Savannah River Plutonium Pit Processing Facility is half finished and the facility could be built by 2032, though the date is not set in stone, a senior contractor executive said here Tuesday at an industry gathering. “You’ve got to put a stake in the sand at some point,” Dennis Carr, […]

States agencies and other entities will receive a combined $54 million worth of funding for programs supporting the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup work, the federal agency said Thursday. For starters, Pittsburgh-based NuVision Engineering will receive $3.5 million for an independent comparison of the DOE nuclear cleanup program with governmental counterparts for the United Kingdom, […]

The Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department could bring in a mediator to help negotiate a plan to control a hexavalent chromium plume at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, an advisory panel heard Wednesday. Managers for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in Los Alamos and the New Mexico Environment Department told the […]

Lockheed Martin wants to build solid rocket motors to compete with the military’s two current main suppliers,  Northrop Grumman’s Orbital ATK and L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne. “We are endeavoring as a defense company to create another supplier,” James Taiclet, the president of Lockheed Martin, testified at a Sept. 20 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s […]

The legacy waste cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has resumed excavating corrugated metal pipe after suspending work in August because of missing paperwork, a company official told a federal advisory board Wednesday. “Gaps in paperwork” for training were found and, as a result, a “stop work” […]

Waste Control Specialists has filed a permit renewal application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, company president David Carlson told Exchange Monitor this week at the National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Va. The renewal paperwork includes the original application and subsequent amendments, with Texas recently. The current application does not expire until September 2024, […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — This winter the Department of Energy and Waste Control Specialists should start moving remaining containers of transuranic waste, stuck at the company’s Texas facility for nine years, to a new above-ground storage facility to prep the material for shipment to the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The “notional” deadline […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — This winter the Department of Energy and Waste Control Specialists should start moving remaining containers of transuranic waste, stuck at the company’s Texas facility for nine years, to a new above-ground storage facility to prep the material for shipment to the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The “notional” deadline […]

As a safeguard against wildfires, crews for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico started to thin out the forest in certain areas of Rendija Canyon, lab officials announced last week. The Rendija Canyon Wildland Fire Fuels Reduction and Defensible Space Project, which should be finished in November, will create a […]

Bill Richardson, a secretary of energy during the Bill Clinton administration who at various points of his career was a Democratic congressman and New Mexico governor, and became something of a specialist in international hostage negotiation, died Sept. 1 at age 75, according to major media accounts. Richardson was first elected to Congress in 1982 […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Processing Facility is structurally sound enough to withstand potential seismic events, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board found in a recent study of the building.  The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has worked with the Department of Energy on the seismic safety of PF-4 and Los Alamos since […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s PF-4 Plutonium Processing Facility is structurally sound enough to withstand potential seismic events, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board found in a recent study of the building.  The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has worked with the Department of Energy on the seismic safety of PF-4 and Los Alamos since […]

Major National Nuclear Security Administration projects to modernize nuclear-weapons production infrastructure shot $2 billion past estimated budgets and are collectively overdue by nearly a decade, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office.  The overruns have several causes, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in the first of what will become biennial reports […]

A National Nuclear Security Administration facility in Albuquerque, N.M., received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a first for any of the agency’s roughly 1,000 buildings. The John A. Gordon Albuquerque Complex Facility, a satellite campus that provides high-performance computing, research and engineering capabilities to nearby Los […]

A National Nuclear Security Administration facility in Albuquerque, N.M., received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a first for any of the agency’s roughly 1,000 buildings. The John A. Gordon Albuquerque Complex Facility, a satellite campus that provides high-performance computing, research and engineering capabilities to nearby Los […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity seeks an external consultant to assess how the Joe Biden administration’s Justice40 program has affected economically underserved communities, according to recently published procurement documents. The small business contract has a one-year base period and a one-year option period. The base period will stretch well into […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News, Va., reported lower earnings in the quarter ended June 30 but called out revenue growth in shipbuilding and the Mission Technologies segment, which handles business with the Department of Energy. Net earnings for the quarter ended June 30 were $130 million, or $3.27 a share, down from $178 million or […]

The Department of Energy, contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge and various state and local officials broke ground Wednesday on a new $550-million low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, DOE said in a press release. The new Environmental Management Disposal Facility will provide onsite disposal of debris generated as DOE continues […]