Hanford Site

With funding for cleanup of the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex approaching a decade high, the agency must show what it can do with the extra cash, Energy Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar said Wednesday. The House and Senate this week unveiled a compromise version of their DOE-funding legislation for fiscal 2019, which would provide […]

The appropriations package agreed upon by a House-Senate conference committee this week makes it official: The Energy Department will not barter excess government uranium in fiscal 2019 to fund environmental remediation at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The multi-agency appropriations bill would provide $841 million for DOE’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, which pays […]

A wildfire burned an estimated 3,000 acres of the Hanford Site in Washington state early Saturday morning. Mission Support Alliance, the Department of Energy contractor in charge of the Hanford Fire Department, said the blaze was discovered at 3:20 a.m. and was contained at 6:50 a.m. The fire burned across grass and brush in the […]

Contractor Mission Support Alliance has begun a $7.8 million improvement to the water-system infrastructure in the center of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Workers are installing about 4 miles of 30-inch pipe to connect the separate water grids of the east and west areas of the nuclear cleanup site. Work is […]

More than 40 companies signed up to attend an industry session last month to learn more about a contract for further cleanup of the Central Plateau at the Hanford Site in Washington state. There were more 90 registered participants representing companies including AECOM, Atkins, AVANTech, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Fluor, Honeywell, Jacobs, Navarro Research, North Wind, […]

A federal judge has pushed out the date of the bench trial in the Hanford Site chemical vapors lawsuit until September 2019, about four years after the case was filed. Judge Thomas Rice, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington state, on Thursday granted a joint request from parties to the case to reschedule the […]

The waste storage tank farm manager at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), is seeking expressions of interest from subcontractors qualified to design and build a 10,000-square-foot modular laboratory facility by the end of 2019. The AECOM-led contractor published the prequalification/expression of interest (EOI) document Aug. 30 on […]

Some information of the well decommissioning program at the Hanford Site in Washington state has not been kept up-to-date, the Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released on Aug. 31. The audit was a follow-up to a January 2005 audit on well decommissioning activities, which found numerous problems. Every time […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies said Wednesday it has promoted Heatherly H. Dukes to the position of president of the company’s Technical Services Group. Dukes has most recently served as the group’s chief operating officer, overseeing BWXT operations at more than a dozen Energy Department and NASA facilities with an annual contract value of about $7 […]

The Department of Energy must hold additional public hearings in the Pacific Northwest on a proposal that could lead to a limited amount of radioactive waste being grouted in place in the Hanford Site’s underground storage tanks, according to three members of Washington state’s congressional delegation. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, along with Rep. […]

Watchdog group Hanford Challenge is calling for an independent look at the threats that Hanford’s contamination may pose to nearby communities after a small, newly completed study reported radioactive contamination in the personal cars or trucks of three workers at the Energy Department site in Washington. The study said the cars had previously been checked […]

The head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office fears remediation within the weapons complex has reached a “plateau” and needs a push to advance toward closure of many sites. Toward that, the office is developing strategic plans both for its full operations and for specific properties over the coming decade. “The analogy that comes […]

The waste storage tank farm manager at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), is seeking expressions of interest from subcontractors qualified to design and build a 10,000-square-foot modular laboratory facility by the end of 2019. The AECOM-led contractor published the prequalification/expression of interest (EOI) document Aug. 30 on the […]

  AVANTech, which works at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, has named a veteran of nuclear waste cleanup as its senior process engineer for the Hanford Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) Project. The Columbia, S.C.-based water treatment provider, a subcontractor to Hanford waste storage tank farm manager Washington River Protection Solutions, said […]

Some information of the well decommissioning program at the Hanford Site in Washington state has not been kept up-to-date, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released Friday. The audit was a follow-up to a January 2005 audit on well decommissioning activities, which found numerous problems. Wells are used at […]

The failure of the second tunnel storing radioactive waste from the Hanford Site’s PUREX processing plant could be more severe than estimated a year ago, according to Department of Energy cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Dan Wood, chief operating officer for the contractor, said new findings of corrosion in the second tunnel raise […]

Honeywell, a top contractor for the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons sites, also sees opportunities on the environmental remediation side of the federal agency’s operations, one newly reassigned executive said recently. Former Air Force colonel David “DJ” Johnson last month became vice president and general manager at Honeywell Federal Solutions, where he oversees the company’s four […]

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), the waste storage tank farm contractor at the Hanford Site, has named a new president. John Eschenberg, WRPS deputy project manager of waste feed delivery, will succeed Mark Lindholm as president on Oct. 8 after a transition period. Lindholm, WRPS president and project manager since October 2015, sent a message […]

The failure of the second tunnel storing radioactive waste from the Hanford Site’s PUREX processing plant could be more severe than estimated a year ago, according to Department of Energy cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Dan Wood, chief operating officer for the contractor, said new findings of corrosion in the second tunnel raise […]

A truck carrying equipment contaminated at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant traveled to two other sites on the Energy Department property and then off-site before the problem was discovered. Employees at the cleanup site in eastern Washington state received a DOE message about the incident in early August. The incident occurred amid preparations to […]

The Department of Energy’s oversight of contractors building the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state is improving, according a recent review by DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA). In a separate report, the DOE oversight office gave WTP prime contractor Bechtel National a clean review for recent development […]

William Cooper, the Trump administration’s nominee to become Energy Department general counsel, was passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a voice vote Thursday afternoon. The vote came after the panel’s business meeting was postponed Thursday morning, a committee staffer said. The nominee will now await action by the full Senate. […]

The Department of Energy does not have effective processes, procedures, and controls over the workers’ compensation program at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the DOE Office of Inspector General said Thursday. Concerns ranged from inadequate communication with workers filing claims for illnesses and injuries to letters of credit issued without adequate controls to a […]

The August doldrums in Washington weren’t quite as quiet as in past years, and there was plenty of news during the ExchangeMonitor’s annual publication break. As chronicled in the Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, here are a few stories we’ve been following. Hanford Treats Over 2 Billion Gallons of Contaminated Groundwater in FY18 Workers at the Hanford […]

Most work resumed Monday on the Hanford Site’s SX Tank Farm after a stop-work order was lifted. One or more workers called a halt to work Friday in the radioactive waste storage area out of safety concerns that a hole discovered the day before could impair the integrity of a nearby underground tank. However, a […]

The Energy Department’s Office of River Protection expects the workload will increase significantly during the next contract period at the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Office of Environmental Management on July 30 issued a draft request for proposals (RFP) for a potential seven-year, $904 million contract for analytical work, testing, […]

John Stang Perma-Fix expect its GeoMelt radioactive waste treatment system to go into fuller production in late 2018 at its Washington state location, according to President and CEO Mark Duff. Early this year, the Atlanta-based waste management company entered into a contract with Veolia Nuclear Solutions to install its patented vitrification technology in Perma-Fix’s Richland […]

Longtime Energy Department hand Jim Owendoff has left his job as the No. 2 official in the Office of Environmental Management (EM) to become a special adviser on nuclear cleanup issues at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Mark Gilbertson, associate principal deputy assistant secretary for EM’s Office of Regulatory and Policy Affairs, will […]

Most work resumed Monday on the Hanford Site’s SX Tank Farm after a stop-work order was lifted. One or more workers called a halt to work Friday in the radioactive waste storage area out of safety concerns that a hole discovered the day before could impair the integrity of a nearby underground tank. However, a […]

The Energy Department’s Office of River Protection expects the workload will increase significantly during the next contract period at the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Office of Environmental Management on July 30 issued a draft request for proposals (RFP) for a potential seven-year, $904 million contract for analytical work, testing, […]