Office of Environmental Management (EM)

The Small Business Administration, Swift & Staley and a firm that successfully challenged the latter’s size eligibility for a Department of Energy landlord contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky have until after Independence Day to file briefs with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Federal Claims Judge Thompson Dietz last week gave the government, […]

The April announcement from the Department of Energy that the B-109 tank is leaking at the Hanford Site in Washington state is not a cause for alarm, site manager Brian Vance said this week. The single-shell tank is leaking at the rate of about 1,000 to 1,500 gallons per year, Vance told an online meeting […]

The Joe Biden administration’s $7.6-billion budget request for the Office of Environmental Management was the largest request for nuclear-weapons cleanup since 2015, the office’s acting head told contractors Thursday. Biden’s ask is the “largest administrative request for environmental management that I can recall,” William (Ike) White, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, told the Energy […]

While not divulging details yet, the manager of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state says the complex will loosen its COVID-19 protocols for fully-vaccinated workers next week. The relaxed rules will technically go into effect Friday, which is not a workday at the site, Brian Vance, the top federal boss at the […]

The head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board told federal contractors Thursday her agency could approve a memorandum of understanding on its “rules of the road” with the Department of Energy as early as next month. “We did have a great conversation with Deputy Secretary [David] Turk earlier this year and “it looks like […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management on Thursday published its potential $100-million solicitation for a new waste haulage contract for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. CAST Specialty Transportation has the current five-year, $112-million contract, set to expire May 27, 2022, for moving transuranic material from DOE generator sites to the […]

After a Department of Energy review prompted by a contract challenge, a joint venture led by Securitas CIS is keeping its $1-billion Security Services contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The DOE Office of Environmental Management said in a Thursday press release that SRS Critical Infrastructure Security is retaining the contract awarded […]

The April announcement from the Department of Energy that the B-109 tank is leaking at the Hanford Site in Washington state is not a cause for alarm, site manager Brian Vance said Wednesday. The single-shell tank is leaking at the rate of about 1,000 to 1,500 gallons per year, Vance told an online meeting of […]

While not divulging details yet, the manager of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state says the complex will loosen its COVID-19 protocols for fully-vaccinated workers next week. The relaxed rules will technically go into effect Friday, which is not a workday at the site, Brian Vance, the top federal boss at the […]

Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions took home $44.6 or 96% of nearly $46 million in available fee for its work as operator of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina for the 16-month period ended Nov. 30. That is according to the latest fee scorecard for the joint venture published Tuesday by […]

The Amentum-BWX Technologies joint venture that runs the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico will be kept on at least until early 2022 as the agency moves ahead with its solicitation for a new prime, according to a nugget tucked inside the White House budget justification for the Office of Environmental […]

The Hanford Site in Washington State would receive a haircut under President Joe Biden’s budget request for the Department of Energy in fiscal 2022, but still account for nearly a third of the entire $7.6-billion budget sought for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. Should the spending package for cleanup at the former […]

The Department of Energy’s environmental liability, which stands at more than a half-trillion dollars, continues to grow and most of it is concentrated in the agency’s nuclear cleanup office, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday in an update to Congress. The DOE liability stands at $512 billion as of fiscal 2020, which is the most […]

The Small Business Administration, Swift & Staley and a firm that successfully challenged the latter’s size eligibility for a Department of Energy landlord contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky have until after Independence Day to file briefs with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Federal Claims Judge Thompson Dietz last week gave the government, […]

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a recently-published report to Congress it found ways to continue acting as a watchdog for defense-nuclear sites owned by the Department of Energy during fiscal year 2020. Resident Inspectors continued to perform on-site safety oversight “within the DOE pandemic constraints at each site,” […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is planning one of its occasional business opportunities forums via Zoom in a little more than two weeks. The session is set to commence at 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on June 24 and should wrap up in less than 90 minutes, according to a notice posted […]

With the Joe Biden administration yet to nominate a permanent assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, William (Ike) White is nearing the two-year mark at the helm of the $7-billion-plus nuclear cleanup branch. White, a career federal employee, has been the top boss at the Environmental Management (EM) since mid-June 2019, initially given […]

A federal judge in South Carolina has dismissed a racial discrimination lawsuit brought by a white former employee of the management contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. In a May 27 order, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Anderson, Jr., dismissed the case brought against Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) by plaintiff Christopher […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology will continue so-called “holistic” negotiations on Hanford Site cleanup milestones with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency at least through the end of June, a state spokesman said this week. “We do have authorization to continue talks through June. No timeline yet for documentation of an […]

New Mexico-based Department of Energy contractor Strategic Management Solutions hired Michael Nosbisch as its director of project controls, effective this week. A former infantry officer in the U.S.Marine Corps who attained the rank of captain before leaving the service in 1994, Nosbisch has more than 30 years of management experience, according to a Strategic Management […]

A week after the Department of Energy awarded a Jacobs-led joint venture remediation business potentially worth $6.4-billion over 10 years, no contract challenges had been announced on the Government Accountability Office website. The Tennessee-based winner, the Idaho Environmental Coalition, comprises Jacobs and North Wind Portage along with three teaming subcontractors: Navarro Research and Engineering, Oak […]

There have been 4,867 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management workforce since the pandemic took root in the United States in early 2020, according to figures provided Thursday by the agency’s cleanup branch. This week there are 47 active confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the Environmental Management (EM) […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., shipped low-level waste to the Nevada National Security Site in May for the first time in nearly two years after the desert site reinstated a certification that was yanked in 2019 following disclosure that Y-12 had sent 32 containers worth of improperly labelled waste to the […]

A lawsuit by a fired ventilation project subcontractor against the Department of Energy’s prime for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has been settled, according to papers filed in a federal district court in New Mexico. The litigation brought by Christensen Building Group and its Critical Applications Alliance venture against Nuclear Waste Partnership was dismissed by […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. , a former Hanford prime contractor, has agreed to pay a $3.04 million settlement to the feds for falsely and knowingly claiming two subcontractors were in Historically Underutilized Business Zones. However, CH2M Hill does not admit guilt in agreeing to the payment. Until its contract expired early this year, CH2M […]

A federal district court in New Mexico has set a Nov. 17 settlement conference for federal and state agencies to bridge their differences surrounding a 2016 consent order on cleanup of legacy waste around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar issued a May 18 order scheduling the formal […]

Thanks to an easy victory in Tuesday’s special election, the Democratic Party maintains control of Mexico’s 1st Congressional District seat vacated in March when Deb Haaland resigned to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of interior. Democrat Melanie Ann Stansbury, a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, won 60% of the vote to defeat […]

The Department of Energy said this week that rubble removal at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant in Washington state is resuming after an extended COVID-19 hiatus. After taking down the last major processing facility at the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), DOE said last February it anticipated removing all the rubble from the site by […]

At deadline Friday, President Joe Biden’s administration had yet to publish a detailed Department of Energy budget request for fiscal 2022, but figures provided May 28 by the Office of Management and Budget show that the White House is willing to spend big on nuclear-weapons cleanup. The nearly $7.6-billion fiscal 2022 request for the DOE […]

The Department of Energy this week rolled out the request for proposals for its much-anticipated long-term management and operations contract for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which between legacy cleanup obligations and national security work figures to be more in demand than ever over the next decade.  The final request for proposals […]