Minority-serving and Tribal Community and Junior colleges have a little more than a month to apply for a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) grant to improve programs that train students in disciplines potentially useful for nuclear weapons work, the nuclear-weapons agency’s Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program wrote in a press release this week.
The NNSA planned to host informational webinars about the grant opportunity, the Community and Junior College Trade Occupation Program, DE-FOA-0002898, on Jan. 10, Jan. 31 and February 7, according to the agency’s funding opportunity announcement.
Rick McLeod, the longtime executive director of the Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization, officially retired from the post this week, although he will stay on while the South Carolina-based group looks for a successor, he said in a Jan. 1 note on LinkedIn.
McLeod led the economic development organization for about 15 years, or about half of its existence. The Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization (SRSCRO) was set up by congress in 1993 to advance the economic prospects of the five counties in South Carolina and Georgia that surround the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. The group also resells some used DOE equipment from the Savannah River Site.
“I’m on retainer for the next couple of months until one is named and will help with the transition,” McLeod said in a Wednesday email to the Exchange Monitor.
The NNSA planned to execute a consent order with Nevada National Security Site prime Mission Support and Test Services (MSTS) to prevent another incident such as the 2021 accident that exposed underground workers to toxic gasses and low-oxygen environments, according to the Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments.
MSTS asked for the consent order after the March 1, 2021 accident involving an uninteruptable power supply system’s battery. The contractor formally reported the details of the accident to the agency on April 12, 2021, according to the order, which the Office of Enterprise Assessments posted online a few days before Christmas.
State and federal officials were set Monday to attend a ribbon cutting at a new radiological response training center at the NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the site wrote in a press release.
The ribbon cutting for the new, 40,000-square-foot Emergency Response Training Facility at the Oak Ridge Enhanced Technology and Training Center was set for 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.
