Office of Environmental Management (EM)

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., had 14 more employees test positive for COVID-19 between Jan. 13 and Jan. 19, the prime contractor said in a Saturday Twitter post, while a half-dozen more cases were confirmed Sunday at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Eleven of the 14 at the […]

Here are some public events related to defense- and civilian-nuclear matters that the ExchangeMonitor staff is tracking this week. January 25 The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board is scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. Eastern Time today. 27 The West Valley Citizen Task Force is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. To register for […]

Two new contractors, for Central Plateau remediation and site services, are taking charge today at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Sunday was the end of the transition period and today marks the first Monday on the job for both Central Plateau Cleanup Co. as well as Hanford Mission Integration Solutions. Central Plateau is composed […]

The Department of Energy and Parsons Corp. have finished hot commissioning of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Parsons, which designed and built the 140,000-square-foot plant to treat salt waste left over from Cold War era nuclear weapons work, will run the facility for a year before turning […]

The Small Business Administration said Friday that Swift & Staley, the Department of Energy’s December winner of the new $160-million Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract, does not meet the size requirement for the set-aside contract.  “The SBA performed a Size Determination on Swift & Staley, LLC, and it determined the firm to be “other than […]

The number of active cases of COVID-19 within the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex dropped by about 50 this week but remained above 400.  There are currently 423 active cases at properties run by the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), a spokesperson for the cleanup branch said in a Thursday email.  That marks […]

Remaining cleanup costs at the West Valley Demonstration Project site in New York could run anywhere from $1.4 billion to $10.6 billion depending on how much contamination is dug up and shipped off-site, the Government Accountability Office said in its report last week on waste disposal at the site. As of February 2020, the Department […]

Federal career man William ‘Ike” White, who has acted as the top boss at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management since June 2019, remains in the top job during the early stages of the administration of President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, outside DOE, the new administration appointed Joyce Connery as the new chair of […]

The Department of Energy will not pursue a civil penalty against Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth over nuclear safety violations in fiscal year 2019 after it cut $2.6 million from the company’s potential $6.7-million subjective fee that year. The infractions at the former gaseous diffusion plant complex in Ohio stem from shortcomings in worker radiation protection at the […]

Less than a month after officially calling off a $13-billion liquid-waste cleanup award at the Hanford Site, the Department of Energy has started procurement of a replacement pact called the Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract, with a draft solicitation expected by March. The draft request for proposals (RFP) will, unlike the now-revoked tank-waste contract awarded […]

A federal judge in Virginia this week refused to throw out a lawsuit filed by a Department of Energy subcontractor, Professional Project Services or Pro2Serve, claiming Leidos Integrated Technology wrongly excluded it from a team about to take over site services at Hanford in Washington state. In the November suit filed in the U.S. District […]

For now at least, the compensation for top managers under the next Oak Ridge Reservation Cleanup Contract in Tennessee will be capped at $525,000 annually, the Department of Energy said in a procurement document posted Jan. 15. The DOE issued its final request for proposals for a new Oak Ridge remediation contract last month and […]

The Department of Energy and Parsons Corp. have finished hot commissioning of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Parsons, which designed and built the 140,000-square-foot plant to treat salt waste left over from Cold War era atomic weapons work, will run the facility for a year before turning […]

Less than a month after officially calling off a $13-billion liquid-waste cleanup award at the Hanford Site, the Department of Energy has started procurement of a replacement pact called the Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract, with a draft solicitation expected by March. The draft request for proposals (RFP) will, unlike the now-revoked tank-waste contract awarded […]

The Department of Energy’s December award of the new $160-million Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract to Swift & Staley could end up being withdrawn, sources told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in the past week. Federal representatives are looking into whether the Paducah-based incumbent contractor exceeds the size limit for this particular small-business set-aside and the […]

The Department of Energy will not pursue a civil penalty against Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth over nuclear safety violations in fiscal year 2019 after it cut $2.6 million from the company’s potential $6.7-million subjective fee that year. The infractions at the former gaseous diffusion plant complex in Ohio stem from shortcomings in worker radiation protection at the […]

For now at least, the compensation for top managers under the next Oak Ridge Reservation Cleanup Contract in Tennessee will be capped at $525,000 annually, the Department of Energy said in a procurement document posted Jan. 15. The DOE issued its final request for proposals for a new Oak Ridge remediation contract last month and […]

Remaining cleanup costs at the West Valley Demonstration Project site in New York could run anywhere from $1.4 billion to $10.6 billion depending on how much contamination is dug up and shipped off-site, the Government Accountability Office said in its report last week on waste disposal at the site. As of February 2020, the Department […]

Management at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has confirmed nine new cases of COVID-19 since Friday. Bosses at the former plutonium production facility were informed of the latest batch of positive cases, seven, on Monday, according to an advisory posted on a DOE website run by the site services contractor. The […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies this morning appointed Rob Smith as its president of government operations, which is a newly-created post. In that role, Smith will lead the company’s nuclear operations and nuclear services segments. This includes work for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Naval Nuclear […]

Federal staffer Allison Finelli has been officially appointed as deputy chief of staff at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management since acting in that capacity since March. The promotion was announced in a Tuesday email to staff at the nuclear cleanup branch by William (Ike) White, the senior advisor for the Environmental Management […]

The Huntington Ingalls Industries-led contractor in charge of legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico won roughly 82% of its total potential fee and 72% of its subjective fee in a recently-released scorecard from the Department of Energy.  Newport News Nuclear BWXT (N3B) Los Alamos took home $8.4 million out of […]

There are currently 473 active cases of COVID-19 within the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex as of close of business on Wednesday, which is up significantly from the past two weeks. The latest figure was provided in a Thursday email from a DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson. The tally represents a jump […]

For the second time in two years, the Department of Energy is looking at shipping certain radioactive waste, now classified as high-level, from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to a commercial disposal site out of state. The DOE said in a Wednesday press release it will issue a Federal Register notice within days […]

Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, the Jacobs-led cleanup contractor at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, earned 69% of its overall potential fee but less than half of its fee resulting from the Department of Energy’s subjective ratings during fiscal 2020. Meanwhile, Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services earned 87% of its potential fee for running the depleted uranium […]

In the wake of the Jan. 6 riot and takeover of the U.S. Capitol Building, and the public rancor which preceded it, several companies doing business in the Department of Energy weapons complex are reconsidering their approach to political donations. For example, Leidos Chairman and CEO Roger Krone announced Tuesday his company’s political action committee […]

The Government Accountability Office in separate reports this week said Congress should look for a disposal path for transuranic waste now at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York, and the Department of Energy must do a better job of monitoring contractors for potential fraud. As of February 2020, DOE reported spending about $3.1 […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. plans to restart an old ventilation fan soon and was recently criticized by the Department of Energy for poor oversight of a major infrastructure project, according to a recently released scorecard. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) also accepted fewer shipments in the pandemic-beleaguered 2020, taking in […]

With the Donald Trump administration coming to an end in less than a week, longtime cleanup hand Todd Shrader is expected to take over as acting head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management office until President-electric Joe Biden has his own people in place. An industry source on Monday said to expect […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management still has much work to do on its end state contracting model in order to truly drive nuclear cleanup projects toward completion, according to a National Academy of Sciences report released Monday. The Environmental Management (EM) office should set up results on intermediate end state milestones midway […]