Idaho National Laboratory

The leaders of site advisory boards for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management complex will discuss waste cleanup with DOE officials, and members of the public, on Oct. 18-19 in Kennewick, Wash. The chairs and vice-chairs of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB) local boards meet twice per year to get updates […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is expected to receive 170 shipments of transuranic waste from the Idaho National Laboratory between August 2017 and August 2018, officials said during a WIPP Town Hall on Thursday in the city of Carlsbad. Idaho will account for nearly two-thirds of the 258 anticipated total […]

The Energy Department has as of this week been penalized more than $2.37 million by the state of Idaho over the ongoing failure to start operating a liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was built to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during […]

The Energy Department has as of Tuesday been penalized more than $2.37 million by the state of Idaho over the ongoing failure to start operating a liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was built to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during Cold […]

The extended closure of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico threatens the Energy’s Department legal obligation to remove all transuranic waste from Idaho by the end of 2018, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said in a report released on Sept. 15. Department officials have acknowledged the possible risk cited in the IG’s […]

The Civilian Board of Contract Appeals has ordered the Energy Department to pay an additional $33.2 million to the former prime cleanup contractor for the Idaho Site. The board said CH2M-WG Idaho is entitled to recover more than $27.3 million in incentive fees for work it did on the Idaho Cleanup Project. In addition, the […]

The extended closure of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico threatens the Energy’s Department legal obligation to remove all transuranic waste from Idaho by the end of 2018, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said in a report released Friday. Department officials have acknowledged the possible risk cited in the IG’s audit of interim […]

Within recent days, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in New Mexico has received its 60th shipment since it resumed receiving radioactive waste from other Department of Energy sites in April. WIPP is the nation’s sole permanent repository for transuranic waste, and its nearly three-year closure following a February 2014 radiation release left shipments stranded […]

The state of Idaho and the Department of Energy have resolved a $648,000 fine levied for the federal agency’s failure to start operating a liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was built to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during Cold War-era spent […]

One of the primary cleanup contractors at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has finished its assessment of the June spread of contamination during demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant. The evaluation by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation identified a need to augment the “work package hazard control set” and to improve measures […]

The state of Idaho and the Department of Energy have resolved a $648,000 fine levied for the federal agency’s failure to start operating a liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was built to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during Cold War-era spent […]

CH2M said this month it continues to wait on a ruling from the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals regarding a $40.1 million fee the company believes a former joint venture is owed for cleanup at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory. CH2M-WG Idaho (CWI) was the prime remediation provider at the facility from May 2005 to March 2016, succeeded by […]

A key piece of technology at the Department of Energy’s Idaho site has in 100,000 hours of operation compacted over 238,000 containers of transuranic waste. The “supercompactor” at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project compresses the 55-gallon drums into pucks just 5 to 7 inches thick, according to an Aug. 2 press release from site […]

Bad news about power plants, nuclear and otherwise, dominated discussion during Fluor Corp.’s second-quarter earnings call Thursday, shouldering out talk of the company’s work on clearnup of the Energy Deaprtment’s nuclear legacy. That latter work has gone well this year for the company, according to its latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Fluor […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting an environmental assessment as part of its review of the Energy Department’s application for a 20-year extension of its license for storage in Idaho of waste from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. “The purpose of the EA is to assess potential environmental impacts that may significantly affect the […]

House lawmakers this week approved a fiscal 2018 energy and water budget that would give the the Department of Energy about $30 billion and add three new cleanup projects to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The House Appropriations Committee agreed by voice vote Wednesday, with a few Democrat dissenters, to send the nearly $38 billion 2018 […]

The Department of Energy has racked up more than $1 million in new penalties from the state of Idaho over the failure to begin operation of a liquid waste treatment facility at the Idaho National Laboratory. The total fines levied against DOE and its current and former contractors on the project now stands at just […]

The Department of Energy has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in new penalties from the state of Idaho over the failure to begin operation of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory. The IWTU is intended to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste stored in underground tanks at the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 9 said it has begun the technical review of the Energy Department’s request for a 20-year license extension for storage in Idaho of debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The Energy Department submitted the request by letter on March 6, after which the NRC carried out an acceptance review […]

The Department of Energy intends to more than double funding in fiscal 2018 for work on the new permanent ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, according to the detailed budget justification released this week for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Airflow at the transuranic waste storage mine was reduced drastically […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 9 said it has begun the technical review of the Energy Department’s request for a 20-year license extension for storage in Idaho of debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The Energy Department submitted the request by letter on March 6, after which the NRC carried out an acceptance review […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday said it has begun the technical review of the Energy Department’s request for a 20-year extension of storage in Idaho of debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. DOE submitted the request by letter on March 6, after which the NRC carried out an acceptance review of the […]

Fluor Idaho sent an improperly sealed container of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant last month, but inspectors at that New Mexico disposal facility caught the mistake, according to a public notice from the Energy Department. The waste, shipped to WIPP May 10 in a TRUPACT-II container that can hold around 1.5 cubic […]

The $88 million top-line increase the Donald Trump administration proposed Tuesday for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2018 is two-and-a-half times less than the office would spend next year to start decontaminating disused nuclear-weapon facilities now owned by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The administration’s new budget plan, if […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week it would begin its technical review of the Energy Department’s application for a 20-year extension of its license to store Three Mile Island nuclear power plant debris in Idaho. Renewal would push back the expiration date for the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) Independent Spent Fuel Storage […]

For the first time in three years, the Energy Department has sent shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for permanent disposal. Shipments from separate DOE facilities either arrived at WIPP or departed for it this week. One shipment arrived early Monday from the Idaho National Laboratory, while another […]

For the first time in more than three years, the Energy Department sent a shipment of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico for permanent disposal, the agency announced Monday. The shipment, from the Idaho National Laboratory, arrived in either the darkness of night or early morning, according to a […]

  The Energy Department is refusing to say when two outstanding cleanup contracts might be awarded at the Idaho National Laboratory site, or why the contract procurements were delayed in the first place. DOE early last year awarded its primary five-year Idaho cleanup contract — worth about $1.4 billion — to the contractor team Fluor […]

PHOENIX — The first three sites to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will be privately operated Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas, and the Department of Energy’s Idaho and Savannah River sites, a senior DOE official said here Monday. The department has not yet decided which of those […]

Idaho officials are open to the idea of lengthening the lifespan of the Energy Department’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project past 2018, but DOE has yet to release a report detailing what such an extension might look like. The facility, which employs about 700 workers, was built more than 15 years ago to treat and […]