Hanford Site

Demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant might stretch beyond a Sept. 30 regulatory deadline, the manager of the Energy Department’s Richland Operations Office told a citizens group Wednesday. While there is a “high probability we can get it done by the end of this year,” the project might only be “near-done by the […]

Bechtel National and the Energy Department could have saved about $2 million if they had reached an agreement to cancel orders for equipment the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) did not urgently need, the agency’s inspector general wrote in a new report. Bechtel is building the plant at the site near Richland, Wash., to treat 56 million […]

The Richland Operations Office will review how its prime contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are passing down nuclear quality assurance requirements to subcontractors and qualifying them after questions were raised about the recently completed River Corridor Closure Contract. A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office audit report released on Feb. 17 found […]

The three agencies that oversee cleanup at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., shrugged off concerns from a local citizens’ board about converting one of several spring meetings about the former plutonium production site to a webinar from an in-person affair, a document published Tuesday shows. The Tri-Party Agreement Agencies — the Energy Department, the […]

Waste retrieval from the Hanford Site double-shell tank with an interior leak has been completed to the requirements of a settlement agreement between the Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology, according to DOE. The federal agency and Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions told the state that two technologies […]

The three agencies that oversee cleanup at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., shrugged off concerns from a local citizens’ board about converting one of several spring meetings about the former plutonium production site to a webinar from an in-person affair, a document published Tuesday shows. The Tri-Party Agreement Agencies — the Energy Department, the […]

Hanford Site tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions has notified the Washington state Department of Ecology that it believes it has finished retrieving waste from double-shell Tank AY-102. That would wrap up the project ahead of the March 4 deadline established in a 2014 settlement agreement with the state. The agreement required that enough […]

The Richland Operations Office will review how its prime contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are passing down nuclear quality assurance requirements to subcontractors and qualifying them after questions were raised about the recently completed River Corridor Closure Contract. A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office audit report released Friday found quality-assurance weaknesses in […]

Two Hanford Site workers received medical checks and were released to return to work after reporting an odor in the Department of Energy facility’s central area at the start of the day shift Thursday. The workers were in the 200 East Area but more than a mile from the closest waste tank farm, according to […]

Cold War nuclear cleanup managed by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for more than half of the federal government’s total environmental liability of $447 billion, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said this week. The cost of the remaining cleanup work across DOE’s nuclear complex was estimated at $257 billion as of […]

The Savannah River National Laboratory has opened an office in Richland, Wash., to support its work at the Hanford Site. The Department of Energy facility’s work has included leading the team of experts who produced the 2014 Hanford Tank Vapor Assessment Report and supporting the Office of River Protection plan to start treating low-activity waste […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look that year at possible problems at the plant. […]

The Department of Energy is taking steps to catch up lost time on demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant after an unusually cold and snowy winter delayed work by several weeks. As of Tuesday, the demolition project had lost the equivalent of 23 10-hour days this winter, or more than a month of […]

The Department of Energy is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the federal government’s environmental liability, which has more than doubled from $212 billion to $447 billion over the last two decades, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday. DOE represents 83 percent of that liability: $372 billion as of fiscal 2016; it is followed distantly […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look in 2012 at possible problems at the plant. […]

The bench trial for the Hanford Site worker vapor protection lawsuit brought by Washington state and other plaintiffs will be postponed until March 5, 2018, Judge Thomas Rice ruled Monday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. The plaintiffs and defendants jointly requested the trial be delayed more than four months from Oct. 30, 2017, […]

Earnings at engineering services firm Jacobs, a support contractor at a number of Energy Department sites, rose about 30 percent to over $60 million in its fiscal first quarter, even as revenue fell 10 percent to just under $3 billion, the company reported Wednesday. The 2017 first quarter benefited from fewer after-tax charges related to the […]

A Washington state House of Representatives committee heard testimony from ill Hanford Site workers and their families on Thursday that even critics of a proposed workers’ compensation bill called compelling. But those opponents told the House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee that while they were sympathetic to the suffering of the workers who testified, House […]

Earnings at engineering services firm Jacobs, a support contractor at a number of Energy Department sites, rose about 30 percent to over $60 million in its fiscal first quarter, even as revenue fell 10 percent to just under $3 billion, the company reported Wednesday. The 2017 first quarter benefited from fewer after-tax charges related to the […]

The bench trial for the Hanford Site worker vapor protection lawsuit brought by Washington state and other plaintiffs will be postponed until March 5, 2018, Judge Thomas Rice ruled Monday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. The plaintiffs and defendants jointly requested the trial be delayed more than four months from Oct. 30, 2017, […]

Chris Kemp left his job as deputy federal project director for retrieval and closure at the Energy Department’s Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site for another DOE job, an agency spokesperson said last week. Kemp, who remains at the Washington state site, is now director of the environmental compliance division at the Office […]

An Environmental Protection Agency transition team official for President Donald Trump expressed interest in picking up the pace of cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. Trump tapped Washington state Sen. Doug Ericksen (R) to serve as one of 10 transition team members for the EPA in Washington, D.C.; the lawmaker also is the […]

Demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant is expected to resume next week following a radioactive contamination spread found last week at the Energy Department facility once used to shape plutonium for insertion into nuclear weapons. At about 4:45 p.m. Jan. 27 a radiation monitor issued an alarm near the demolition area of the […]

A Richland, Wash., resident has voluntarily withdrawn a lawsuit demanding that now-former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy issue or deny the Hanford Site air operating permit required under the federal Clean Air Act. Attorneys for Bill Green filed the notice of voluntary dismissal on Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. Judge Salvador […]

A Richland, Wash., resident has voluntarily withdrawn a lawsuit demanding that now-former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy issue or deny the Hanford Site air operating permit required under the federal Clean Air Act. Attorneys for Bill Green filed the notice of voluntary dismissal on Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. Judge Salvador […]

The spread of radioactive contamination outside the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant has stopped demolition, but work is expected to resume later this week. At about 4:45 p.m. Friday a radiation monitor issued an alarm near the area of the plant now undergoing demolition. About 10 minutes later the spread of radiation near the demolition site […]

Chris Kemp left his job as deputy federal project director for retrieval and closure at the Energy Department’s Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site for another DOE job, an agency spokesperson said Friday. “Chris made a lateral move effective the beginning of the month,” the official said by email. Kemp, who remains at the […]

Plaintiffs and defendants have agreed to mediation in an attempt to settle the lawsuit over worker protection from tank waste vapors at the Hanford Site in Washington state. They filed a joint motion in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington asking the judge to extend the schedule in the case to allow time for mediation. […]

  The Hanford Site’s Office of River Protection has obtained samples of glass up to 2,000 years old to help it learn more about how the substance ages as the Department of Energy facility prepares to vitrify, or glassify, tank waste. The ancient glass is being studied to predict how glassified waste might age over […]

The first potential chemical vapors incident of the new year at the Hanford Site’s radioactive waste storage tank farms was reported Wednesday. Nine workers at the Department of Energy site in Washington state reported odors near worker trailers outside the AP Tank Farm, and were told to leave the area, according to tank farm contractor […]