The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board representatives held eight briefings for congressional committees or staffers in fiscal 2023, according to a recently-released financial report.
According to its financial report to congress, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) also held met with other groups: the Hanford Advisory Board, Savannah River Site Watch, Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, Los Alamos Study Group, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Honor our Pueblo Existence, Tewa Women United, Nevada Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, and the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.
Toward the end of fiscal 2023, the agency had about 116 full-time staffers and was hiring more employees, DNFSB Chair Joyce Connery said in the report. The board’s headcount is legally capped at 130. The board, which provides independent safety advice to the Department of Energy, requested a $47.2 million budget for fiscal 2024, which would be a 14% hike from the fiscal 2023 level of $41.4 million.
The Department of Energy is making available $19 million in grant funding for disadvantaged communities around nuclear cleanup sites, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said Wednesday.
DOE expects to make many financial assistance awards to communities that have shouldered the responsibility for decades of nuclear military, research and cleanup work, the department said in a press release.
The grants will have performance periods ranging from one to three years and will support economic development and revitalization efforts, according to the release. The grants will also “promote inclusive community engagement practices,” according to the release.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee should be powered by the equivalent of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030 under a deal announced Thursday by the department and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will supply the federal complex, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex with carbon-free power, the parties announced in a press release. The memorandum of understanding advances an executive order by President Joe Biden to move federal installations away from reliance on fossil fuels for electricity.
In the months ahead, TVA and DOE will draw up plans to provide Oak Ridge and potentially other federal customers in TVA’s service region with 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030, with half of it coming through local sources, according to the release. Separately, TVA is part of a team looking to develop a small modular reactor at the Clinch River Site near Oak Ridge.
When the House of Representatives voted Friday Dec. 1 to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who has not been convicted of any crime, some prominent GOP members of the House representing Department of Energy weapons complex sites came down on opposite sides.
The 311-to-114 vote to kick out Santos, the subject of a scathing House Ethic Committee report, drew “no” votes from Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) who represents DOE’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee as well as Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a supporter of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
A couple of Fleischmann’s fellow GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee: Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) who represents the Hanford Site in Washington state and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) who represents the Idaho National Laboratory, voted to expel the member. The vote came after the House Ethic Committee concluded “Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”
Westinghouse Electric said Nov. 29 it has acquired the remaining 50% of Tecnatom, a Spanish nuclear services business, from Endesa, Madrid, for an undisclosed amount.
Westinghouse bought a 50% interest in Tecnatom in 2021 and ran the company jointly with Endesa, an electric company serving Spain and Portugal. Tecnatom is a Spanish engineering and digital company that has served the nuclear sector since 1957, Westinghouse said in a press release.
Tecnatom is a global leader in non-destructive examination for the nuclear and aerospace industries, Westinghouse said in the release. No sales price was revealed in the press release.
A longtime Jacobs manager, Dee Gray, recently announced on LinkedIn she has joined Navarro as a strategic integration and development director supporting the 222-S Laboratory at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
Gray has been at Jacobs, or the former CH2M, in various roles since 2007, most recently as head of strategic communications and talent acquisition, according to her profile.
