Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA), the Department of Energy’s operations contractor for the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is on the lookout for potential office space around Idaho Falls, according to an online procurement notice.
As it kicks off its market research, the prime contractor is asking for expressions of interest (EOI) from providers capable of leasing suitable local office space, according to the notice posted Tuesday. The EOI was posted online in the federal government’s System for Award Management (SAM.gov). Responses are due before 2 a.m. Eastern Time on Nov. 29, according to the notice.
“Over the next five to seven years, BEA may seek to secure between 200,000 to 350,000 square feet of general use office space,” Battelle Energy Alliance said. The contractor’s existing lease on a 280,000 square-foot building will soon expire and BEA is interested in exploring alternate options, according to the notice. The contact person for more information on the EOI is Ezra Payne, ezra.payne@inl.gov.
While the federal government is reopening, a regular meeting of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) Citizens Advisory Board in South Carolina scheduled for next week has been called off.
The SRS Citizens Advisory Board was to meet next Tuesday, Nov. 18 at the new Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative center at the University of South Carolina-Aiken. The building is meant to provide a modern new off-site location for joint projects between the Savannah River National Laboratory and outside entities.
As of Tuesday, Nov. 11, the Nov. 18 meeting was listed as “cancelled” on the SRS advisory board meeting website.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Energy’s report on a national waste management plan is coming together, DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory senior policy advisor Bradley Williams said this week at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) conference.
Driven by President Donald Trump’s executive order “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base”, DOE, in conjunction with other agencies, is supposed to develop a strategy for management of spent fuel and high-level waste.
The 240-day report is due to the White House by January 2026.
Williams, one of the lead authors of the report, did not go into much detail on the document itself but said Monday that the report has been drafted and is being reviewed prior to publication.
The full Senate is expected to vote early next week on the nomination of Ho Nieh to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Senate will proceed to a roll call vote Tuesday Nov. 18 at 5:30 p.m., according to the Senate Cloakroom’s Monday post on X.
If confirmed, Nieh will serve on a term that is set to expire on June 30, 2029. The Cloakroom is a social media site that monitors votes on the Senate floor.
Nuclear fuel reprocessing is an overpriced distraction that will slow down nuclear innovation and derail United States’s nuclear leadership if practiced, a former Department of Energy (DOE) official wrote in an opinion piece this week.
In a Monday op-ed piece posted on Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) website, Ross Matzkin-Bridger, senior director of NTI’s Nuclear Materials Security program, urged the United States to avoid fuel reprocessing at all costs.
“Each attempt to revive reprocessing ends the same way: billions of dollars down the drain, technical failures abound, and security risks increase,” Matzkin-Bridger said. “At a time when the world needs clean energy fast, reprocessing would be no more than a costly distraction.”