Hanford Site

The Washington state Department of Ecology took legal action against the Department of Energy Wednesday evening over the collapse of part of a nuclear waste tunnel discovered at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Plant the day before. As a Hanford regulator, the state agency issued an enforcement order requiring assessments, reports, and submission […]

Authorities declared an emergency for most of the day at the Hanford Site in Washington state after the roof of one waste disposal tunnel was discovered to be breached. No airborne contamination was detected and no workers were injured, but radiation monitoring was continuing Tuesday evening, according to the Department of Energy. Workers in the […]

Earnings at engineering services firm Jacobs, a support contractor at a number of Energy Department sites, fell more than 20 percent year-over-year to about $50 million for the fiscal second quarter ended March 31, the company said Tuesday. Quarterly revenue rose 20 percent to about $2.8 billion, according to the company’s latest earnings press release. […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will meet on June 21 to discuss the Energy Department’s research into the staying power of the borosilicate glass the agency wants to use to immobilize high-level liquid waste at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The meeting will be held at the Courtyard Richland Columbia Point hotel in […]

  The Department of Energy has not used leading practices to manage the risk of fraud and other improper payments to its contractors and subcontractors, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday. The report found inconsistent review of invoices, too little data for oversight, and a lack of centralized and detailed policies. “Improper […]

  Washington state officials were cool this week to a new government report that could point toward an alternative method for treating radioactive waste stored at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. Grouting holds promise to effectively treat a portion of the millions of gallons of low-activity radioactive waste stored in tanks at Hanford, the […]

Workers have entered an airlock at the Hanford Site’s 324 Building for the first time in 15 years. It marks the restart of significant hands-on work to demolish the building, after careful planning and practice at a mockup facility built outside of the Department of Energy facility in Washington state. “There really is progress being […]

The Department of Energy has not used leading practices to manage the risk of fraud and other improper payments to its contractors and subcontractors, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday. The report found inconsistent review of invoices, too little data for oversight, and a lack of centralized and detailed policies. “Improper payments, […]

Mission Support Alliance, the Department of Energy’s services contractor for the Hanford Site in Washington state, recycled nearly 2,500 tons of waste last year and is working to beat that total this year. Its goal in 2016 was to keep 50 percent of Hanford nonhazardous solid waste and 50 percent of the site’s construction and […]

Local authorities have charged three men with illegally entering an area of the Hanford Site closed to the public to gather antlers shed by deer and elk. One of the men, Daniel Briant Charboneau, 32, of Pasco, was an employee of Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions at the time of the alleged […]

Three men have been charged with trespassing on an area of the Hanford Site closed to the public to gather antlers shed by deer and elk. One of the men, Daniel Briant Charboneau, 32, of Pasco, was an employee of Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions at the time of the alleged incident. […]

The book would close on a whistleblower lawsuit that Bechtel National and AECOM settled last year for $125 million, under a final stipulation for dismissal the three plaintiffs filed Tuesday. The filing is mostly a formality, as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington state had already dismissed much of the case in […]

The U.S. Department of Labor will no longer assume that applicants to Part E of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program were not exposed to unsafe levels of toxins after 1995 at the Hanford Site and other locations. A search will be conducted to find denied claims in which that assumption may have been […]

Crews should within a couple weeks begin demolition of the most contaminated portion of the Hanford Site’s most hazardous building, the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Tom Teynor, Department of Energy manager for the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), provided the update on the highly contaminated canyon of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility on Tuesday at a committee […]

Nearly 5 miles of water lines at the Hanford Site have been replaced, ending both the need for frequent emergency repairs and the potential for contamination to spread deeper in the soil when aging water lines broke or leaked. The recently completed project cost about $3 million, including revegetation and related work, according to Mission […]

  Plaintiffs and defendants met with a mediator for a first session Thursday to attempt to resolve a lawsuit demanding better protection for Hanford Site workers exposed to chemical vapors from waste tanks, according to Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS). The session, held in Seattle, was expected to continue today. Washington […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) is investigating Bechtel National, prime contractor for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, over a worker injury in November. The office did not describe the details or circumstances of the injury, except to say it occurred “during preparation of a plant cooling […]

The Energy Department’s inspector general said Tuesday a Hanford Site contractor appears on track to start removing 27 cubic meters of radioactive sludge from a building near the Columbia River by October 2018, but dinged the company for masking cost overruns with dodgy accounting. CH2M Plateau Remediation Co. “appears to be on schedule to meet […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) is investigating Bechtel National, prime contractor for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, over a worker injury in November. The office did not describe the details or circumstances of the injury, except to say it occurred “during preparation of a plant cooling […]

The Energy Department’s inspector general said Tuesday a Hanford Site contractor appears on track to start removing 27 cubic meters of radioactive sludge from a building near the Columbia River by October 2018, but dinged the company for masking cost overruns with dodgy accounting. CH2M Plateau Remediation Co. “appears to be on schedule to meet […]

The executive board of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) has picked an officer from Local 427 of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades as the next president of the umbrella group for 15 Hanford Site unions. Jeff McDaniel took over as president at the HAMTC meeting Wednesday after Dave Molnaa, who […]

  The Hanford Site is developing an acquisitions strategy as it eyes the expiration of major cleanup contracts in the next couple years, officials said Wednesday at the “Hanford Live” virtual question-and-answer session. Department of Energy officials had expected to release a comprehensive contracting strategy for Hanford in January and to issue draft requests for […]

A 60-day public comment period opened Monday on Bechtel National’s plan to start installing pipes needed to clean up the Hanford Site’s low-activity liquid radioactive waste, according to regulatory filings made public this week. If granted, the modification to the company’s permit with Washington state would allow Bechtel to install underground plumbing to transfer low-activity […]

A 60-day public comment period opened Monday on Bechtel National’s plan to start installing pipes needed to clean up the Hanford Site’s low-activity liquid radioactive waste, according to regulatory filings made public yesterday. If granted, the modification to the company’s permit with Washington state would allow Bechtel to install underground plumbing to transfer low-activity waste between […]

Top officials on the Hanford Site cleanup, along with federal and state regulators, will take questions from an online audience Wednesday as part of the Hanford Live event. Those interested can register online ahead of the webinar, which is slated to begin at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Scheduled federal and state attendees include: Doug Shoop, […]

It was not clear this week how a Canadian company’s multibillion-dollar offer to acquire engineering giant Atkins would affect the company’s work on the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations. The companies on Monday confirmed they were in talks for SNC-Lavalin Group of Montreal to acquire London-based Atkins for about $3.5 billion. The transaction would include […]

The president of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) is resigning, but says he plans to remain involved at the Hanford Site, focusing on health and safety training. Dave Molnaa will on April 16 leave the job he has held for 12 years at HAMTC, an umbrella group for 15 unions representing workers at […]

It was not clear Wednesday how a Canadian company’s multibillion-dollar offer to acquire engineering giant Atkins would affect the company’s work on the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations. SNC-Lavalin Group of Montreal on Monday confirmed it had offered some $3.5 billion to buy London-based Atkins. The company has a presence, among other places, at […]

Online registration is scheduled to open on April 11 for upcoming tours of the Hanford Site that will focus on cleanup operations at the onetime plutonium production facility, the Department of Energy announced Friday. Those interested can register via the Hanford website, hanford.gov. The tours will involve viewings and briefings on several cleanup projects at […]

  Legislation that would have made Hanford Site workers more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation has failed to pass out of a Washington state Senate committee. The deadline passed Wednesday for Senate committees to send House policy bills to the full Senate, under the Washington state Legislature’s 2017 session “cutoff calendar.” The state Senate […]