The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said it established a new initiative to improve energy security and climate-change friendliness at its nationwide enterprise of labs, plants and sites.
The Energy Resilient Infrastructure and Climate Adaptation (ERICA) initiative “will be a critical element of NNSA’s multi-faceted strategy to identify, prioritize, and implement infrastructure investments that increase energy resilience, energy security, and sustainability in support of the agency’s national security missions,” the agency wrote in a press release.
Unionized guards at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, ratified a new contract with Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the plant’s Bechtel National-led management and operations contractor, the site wrote this week on Twitter.
“On May 10, 2022, CNS was informed by the [Pantex Guards Union] that a new five-year labor agreement was ratified for work at Pantex. The PGU is the sole bargaining agent for the local union representing approximately 500 workers,” the site wrote in its tweet.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday unanimously passed a clean two-year extension for a program that compensates certain people in the continental U.S. who were sickened by atmospheric nuclear weapons tests and uranium mining.
The House approved the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Extension Act of 2022 only a week after the Senate passed the bill, clearing the way for President Joe Biden to sign the measure into law. RECA will expire in July without the two-year extension.
The NNSA plans to do a training exercise the week of May 16 in Austin, Texas, to demonstrate how authorities and others should respond to a radiological incident, the agency said in a press release.
The annual Cobalt Magnet 22 exercise “is led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration [and] brings numerous agencies together to ensure preparedness against radiological threats,” the agency wrote in the release.
