Eleven candidates, including multiple Republicans have filed paperwork with Washington state election officials to compete in an Aug. 4 primary to help select a successor to incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) in the state’s 4th congressional district.
The Central Washington district, with a history of supporting Republicans, includes the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
Newhouse, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, is one of the few remaining Republicans left in Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
A construction company has broken ground on an $11 million procurement warehouse for the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Program (SRPPF).
Hensel Phelps, the general contractor for the facility, said in its June 12 news release that the warehouse will be 22,000 square feet and is slated for completion in March 2027. The warehouse will provide procurement and logistics for SRPPF, with a long-term goal of supporting plutonium pit production at the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
“Hensel Phelps is constructing the SRPPF warehouse as a non-radiological procurement support facility that provides critical procurement and logistics functions for plutonium processing and the production of plutonium pits at the site,” the contractor said in the release. This facility supports a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plan to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year, the company said. The warehouse is a collaborative effort between Hensel Phelps, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and NNSA, a semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy.
A Department of Energy Savannah River Site contractor and a safety watchdog are looking at an early May mishap where a crane boom struck a powerline along an access road in the saltstone area of the complex.
The incident was laid out in two separate Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff reports. BWXT-led Savannah River Mission Completion “declared a company-wide crane movement standdown until all the details of the event could be determined,” according to the original report dated May 8.
The DNFSB report said while moving a mobile crane down an access road the crane operator and a group of spotters “noticed a pop near the boom of the crane and saw a power pole moving. The foreman identified that the boom of the crane had struck a powerline.” The crane was soon freed from the powerline. But a review of the incident later revealed required paperwork on crane movement had not been filled out in advance.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was hospitalized Sunday according to reports from national news organizations.
“Senator McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning,” spokesperson David Popp said in a statement,” quoted by NBC News and other major outlets. “He is receiving excellent care.” Popp did not share additional details, according to the NBC report.
McConnell, 84, the former longtime Senate GOP leader is not seeking re-election. He is currently a member of the Senate Appropriations and Senate Rules Committees.