Office of Environmental Management (EM)

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 […]

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 Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., took in 10 shipments of transuranic waste during December and 192 for all of 2020. The 2020 figure is a major drop-off, 100 fewer than the total of 292 for 2019, according to data from DOE’s public website for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant […]

An article in the Jan. 13 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing incorrectly reported that a Maryland-based company Appsential has filed a bid protest of an Office of Environmental Management (EM) waste treatment contract. The company protested an unrelated Department of Energy contract outside of EM. 

This week the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico plans a short-duration test of its idle 700-C ventilation fan to increase underground airflow during certain work. The testing will last about four hours, according to a press release issued late Friday by the DOE’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Plant […]

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 […]

With the Donald Trump administration coming to an end in a little over 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 […]

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 […]

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), whose district includes the Oak Ridge Site, has tested positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, there are a batch of new cases at the Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C. Fleischmann announced in a Sunday press release that he has tested positive for the coronavirus. “Today, I learned that I have tested […]

Here’s some of the news Weapons Complex Monitor tracked over the last two weeks during the Exchange Monitor’s publishing break for the winter holidays. Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration this week began the process of taking over the Department of Energy’s 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Located in the 200-West […]

Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, took home almost $64 million or 98% of its total potential fee for work done over an 18-month period ending Sept. 30, 2020. The contractor was rated “very good” on its subjective fee as determined by […]

Time appears to have run out on the nomination of Matthew Moury to be a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. As of Jan. 3, the nomination to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) was officially returned by the Senate to President Donald Trump after the nomination never advanced to the full […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is reviewing a request by Waste Control Specialists to continue holding drums of potentially-combustible transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at its Andrews County, Texas facility into December 2022. About 110 containers of the problem waste from the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico have basically been […]

As of this morning, the Government Accountability Office website lists no bid protests filed yet for the Department of Energy’s Dec. 22 award of a potential 10-year, $3.8 billion Savannah River National Laboratory contract to a Battelle-owned team. Accounting for holidays and weekends, today marks 10 days since DOE announced the award. Losing bidders have […]

The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals has ruled the Department of Energy was wrong to disallow $16.6 million in costs incurred over several years by parent companies of Mission Support Alliance. In a ruling dated Dec. 17, the appeals board held the agreement between DOE and the Leidos-led infrastructure services contractor team at the […]

The Department of Energy and Bechtel announced Wednesday in an online ceremony that construction of facilities needed to start processing low-activity tank waste are complete at the $17-billion vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) facilities at the Waste Treatment Plant include a new Analytical Laboratory, the new […]

As of close of business Wednesday, nuclear cleanup sites managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had 381 active cases of COVID-19 scattered across its workforce, a spokesperson for the office said this week. The figure, while still high, is down 50 from the 431 active cases cited on Dec.31. As for […]

Just before Christmas, and months after two losing teams protested the award, the Department of Energy canned a $13-billion liquid-waste cleanup contract awarded in May to a BWX Technologies-led team. It is the second time in two years that a BWXT-led team has seen DOE cancel a major procurement which it had originally won. In […]

As part of the omnibus spending package signed Dec. 27 by President Donald Trump, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will receive almost $7.6 billion for fiscal 2021, which is $131 million above its funding level for the 2020 budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2020. It is also about 22% more than […]

In a long-awaited report published this week, the Department of Energy estimated it could save up to $230 billion by lowering the classification level of certain radioactive waste from nuclear-weapons production — and while some neighbors of nuclear-cleanup sites welcomed the idea, it remained far from certain that Congress will give the agency clear legal […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is reviewing a request by Waste Control Specialists to continue holding drums of potentially-combustible transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at its Andrews County, Texas facility into December 2022. About 110 containers of the problem waste from the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico have basically been […]

The Department of Energy and Bechtel announced Wednesday in an online ceremony that construction of facilities needed to start processing low-activity tank waste are complete at the $17-billion vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) facilities at the Waste Treatment Plant include a new Analytical Laboratory, the new […]

The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals has ruled the Department of Energy was wrong to disallow $16.6 million in costs incurred over several years by parent companies of Mission Support Alliance. In a ruling dated Dec. 17, the appeals board held the agreement between DOE and the Leidos-led infrastructure services contractor team at the […]

The Low Activity Waste Facility at the Hanford Site in Washington State is now scheduled to begin solidifying liquid waste not sooner than 2024, instead of 2023, because of COVID-19, under a recent agreement between the Department of Energy and Washington state. In December, Judge Rosanna Peterson of the Eastern District of Washington approved a […]

Lowering the hazard classification of some defense-nuclear waste could save the Department of Energy more than $200 billion in disposal costs, the agency told Congress in a report three years in the making. Most of the potential savings, between roughly $70 billion and $200 billion, would come from reclassifying low-activity waste at the Hanford West […]

Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, took home almost $64 million or 98% of its total potential fee for work done over an 18-month period ending Sept. 30, 2020. The contractor was rated “very good” on its subjective fee as determined by […]

As of this morning, the Government Accountability Office website lists no bid protests filed yet for the Department of Energy’s Dec. 22 award of a potential 10-year, $3.8 billion Savannah River National Laboratory contract to a Battelle-owned team. Accounting for holidays and weekends, this coming Friday will mark 10 days since DOE announced the award. […]

As of early Dec. 30, no companies have filed challenges with the Government Accountability Office to contest the Dec. 10 award of the new $160-million Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract to Kentucky-based Swift & Staley. The Department of Energy received four bids for the contract, an agency spokesperson said Dec. 17. The spokesperson did not […]

The Department of Energy liked what it saw in Washington River Protection Solutions’ tank waste management at the Hanford Site in Washington state during fiscal 2020. The DOE awarded the Amentum-Atkins partnership about $42.58 million or 95% out of a potential $45 million in fees for overseeing Hanford’s 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and […]

The nuclear cleanup properties overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had 431 active cases of COVID-19 as of the close of business Wednesday. The figure, shared in a Thursday email by an Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson, is a jump from the 366 active cases reported by the office one week before […]