A key environmental document and Record of Decision (ROD) issued Thursday by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) clears the way for expanding operations for Sandia National Laboratories over the next 15 years.
The “expanded operations alternative” endorsed the NNSA’s final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement and ROD should allow Sandia to build or upgrade its facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., according to an NNSA press release.
It would also allow Sandia to proceed with the Combined Radiation Environments for Survivability Testing (CREST) Complex. CREST would replace the Annular Core Research Reactor facility and other related structures.
About 81 million pounds of rubble have been cleared away from the two-acre footprint of the former Alpha-2 building site at the Y-12 National Security Complex at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the Department of Energy said Tuesday.
That amounts to about 3,500 truckloads of debris being hauled away from the former uranium enrichment building by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and its contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR).DOE said in January it had finished tearing down the building..
The remediation brings DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) closer to being able to use the site for future national security mission work, Environmental Management said in a Tuesday press release.The next project phase of the work starts in June and involves reducing the size of 800,000 pounds of lead extracted from the building, and packaging it for shipment according to DOE.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and legacy remediation contractor Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) will hold a public meeting Wednesday evening June 3 in Santa Fe, N.M., to discuss wildfire preparedness and mitigation.
The region around DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory has suffered many major wildfires over the years.
A registration link for in-person and virtual attendance can be found here. The session is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. Mountain Time.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Finance Committee lost his Republican primary runoff Tuesday to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to national news outlets.
Paxton, recently endorsed by President Donald Trump, won about 64% of the vote in the GOP runoff, according to Wednesday morning data from NBC News.The winner will face Democrat James Talarico, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, in the November general election. In March, Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasemine Crockett in the Texas Democratic Party primary.
Cornyn was first elected to the Senate in 2002. Paxton became Texas attorney general in 2015 and later withstood a 2023 impeachment vote in the GOP-majority Texas House of Representatives.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) will run for another term in Florida’s 20th Congressional district amid Florida’s new redrawn district maps, she announced on her X account May 22.
“Today I’m announcing my candidacy for reelection in Congressional district 20. Because we can not let [President Donald] Trump destroy Broward County’s power,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I’ll continue to use my seniority in Washington to make Broward a safer, less expensive place to live, raise a family, and retire.”
Wasserman Schultz has been a representative for over 20 years. She is a member of the House Appropriation Committee and its Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies. The subcommittee is responsible for funding the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Department of Energy’s Kyle Haustveit has been sworn in as undersecretary of energy following his recent confirmation by the Senate along with 40-plus other nominees by President Donald Trump.
With Haustveit being confirmed as the undersecretary of energy, acting undersecretary of energy Alex Fitzsimmons has been shifted to work as the associate deputy secretary of energy and senior advisor to the secretary, according to a DOE May 22 press release.
Fitzsimmons took over as acting undersecretary of energy after Preston Wells Griffith bounced out of that position in October 2025. Prior to that, Fitzsimmons was appointed to be DOE chief of staff under Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.