Office of Environmental Management (EM)

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state needs to be better prepared to cope with additional failure of single-shell tanks holding radioactive wastes, according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General. That is a key takeaway from a report, dated Sept. 30 and recently posted online. If many existing underground tanks fail there […]

Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co. kicks off its 60-day transition period today to become the new major remediation contractor at the Central Plateau area of Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, under a potential 10-year, $10-billion agreement. On Dec. 4 the joint venture comprising Amentum, Fluor and Atkins will take over from Jacobs […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has released its record of decision for cleaning up contaminated soil on its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif. Like Boeing, and the Department of Energy, NASA is one of three parties responsible for cleanup of the sprawling research site in the Simi Valley. […]

A Department of Energy advisory board is drafting a report to help the Office of Environmental Management develop a complex-wide priorities list for nuclear cleanup complex. The DOE Environmental Management Advisory Board could vote later this fall on a subcommittee report into how to make remediation of 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites more […]

Idaho-based North Wind Group got a three-year, $4.5-million task order for cleanup work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced the small-business set-aside award to North Wind this week in a press release. The new task order was issued under an existing indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract […]

The Department of Energy Tuesday awarded a joint venture led by Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Navarro Research and Engineering a $389-million contract to run the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration is a team of Navarro and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Planned […]

For the first time in 15 years, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is making shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a lab spokesman said this week. Three shipments left Lawrence Livermore for WIPP during the week of Sept. 21, one week after a […]

The Department of Energy could release its request for proposals for infrastructure support services at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio by Thanksgiving. In a notice posted Sept. 25 on a federal procurement website, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said to expect a solicitation within 15 to 60 days for replacement of the current five-year, […]

Federal agencies were still open for business Thursday morning, after President Trump signed a stopgap budget bill that freezes most federal budgets at 2020 levels through Dec. 11. With appropriations set to lapse at midnight, the Senate on Wednesday cast votes to pass the measure with less than a working day left before the literal […]

Incumbent contractor Navarro Research and Engineering will provide support services to the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management through the first quarter of 2021 while a court fight continues over award of a new long-term agreement. In a notice posted Wednesday on a federal procurement website, the DOE said it will extend the expiration […]

There are 74 active cases of COVID-19 currently within the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management’s nuclear cleanup sites, an agency spokesperson said late Thursday. That is slightly up from the 70 active cases the prior week across the 16 former Cold War and Manhattan Project sites overseen by the office, but still less […]

The potential $21-billion Department of Energy solicitation for liquid waste management and related environmental work at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is on the street. In a notice posted Thursday on a procurement website, the DOE Office of Environmental Management issued the final request for proposals (RFP) for what it calls the Savannah […]

The former chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board used procedural tactics to block board approval of a COVID-19 response plan that complied with federal best practices, the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog drafted a COVID-19 response plan at the onset of the pandemic, but […]

A COVID-19 outbreak hit the Salt Waste Processing Facility roughly a month before its scheduled opening at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, but the outbreak is under control now, the facility’s prime contractor said Wednesday. More than 40 members of the operations or maintenance staff for Parsons were unavailable during […]

With Tuesday’s award from the Department of Energy, four major new contractors have been announced for the Hanford Site in Washington state since last December. Two of the four joint ventures have already received a green light to start transition from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, one contract award appears in doubt, and the latest […]

Fluor Idaho, the cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, will serve as mentor to an engineering services firm in Idaho Falls. The remediation contractor announced in a Tuesday press release that it signed a mentor-protégé agreement with Walsh Engineering Services. The owner and president of Walsh Engineering Services, Mark Pope, said […]

A Department of Energy advisory board is drafting a report to help the Office of Environmental Management develop a complex-wide priorities list for nuclear cleanup complex. The DOE Environmental Management Advisory Board could vote later this fall on a subcommittee report into how to make remediation of 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites more […]

The Department of Energy Tuesday awarded a joint venture led by Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Navarro Research and Engineering a $389-million contract to run the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration is a team of Navarro, and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International, wholly owned subsidiary of Planned Systems […]

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is making shipments of transuranic waste to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a lab spokesman said Monday.  Three shipments left Lawrence Livermore for WIPP during the week of Sept. 21, Livermore spokesman Nolan O’Brien wrote in an email. Livermore crews expect to […]

Idaho-based North Wind Group got a three-year, $4.5-million task order for cleanup work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced the small-business set-aside award to North Wind in a Monday press release. The new task order was issued under an existing indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has completed its 8-gallon pilot shipment of wastewater to a private disposal site in West Texas under the agency’s new interpretation of high-level waste. The shipment from the Savannah River Defense Waste Processing Facility to Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in Andrew County, Texas, concluded Tuesday, […]

The Department of Energy could release its request for proposals for infrastructure support services at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio by Thanksgiving. In a notice posted Friday on a federal procurement website, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said to expect such a solicitation within 15 to 60 days for replacement of the current five-year, […]

On Tuesday, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote, the House rewrote and then passed a stopgap spending bill that would freeze budgets for Department of Energy nuclear programs at 2020 levels through Dec. 11. The revised bill sailed through 357-57, with 14 not voting and one voting “present.” All 56 “no” votes, and 13 of those […]

The head of the nuclear waste cleanup program at the Washington state Department of Ecology is leaving the position at the end of October to take another job with the state. Ecology cleanup director Alex Smith is moving to a position with the Washington Department of Natural Resources as the deputy supervisor for aquatics, she […]

The business dismissed recently for slow progress in building a new underground ventilation system for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant expects to leave the New Mexico project by the end of the month. The parties are working out a financial settlement, said Mark Christensen, owner and president of Christensen Building Group, and […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General says two major contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington State don’t always maintain respirators in accordance with government requirements. The report said more attention to respiratory equipment is needed by Jacobs subsidiary, CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co., and Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions. CH2M is responsible […]

More than half of the Department of Energy’s 11,000-member workforce at the Hanford Site are back inside the fence, a Department of Energy official said Wednesday. Hanford is bringing 190 additional workers back onsite this week, DOE’s Erik Olds, told the Hanford Advisory Board during an online meeting. That brings the current number of federal […]

Two Department of Energy contractors, Bechtel and what is now Amentum, will pay $57.75-million to resolve claims that a joint venture overbilled the government for work at the Hanford Site in Washington, the Department of Justice said late Tuesday. Bechtel and Amentum, the former AECOM Energy & Construction, admit no wrongdoing by their subsidiary Waste […]

The Department of Energy has decided not to have a potential member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) lead its discussions about communications between the agency and the safety watchdog. In a Sept. 15, letter to the now former DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton, Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes said Todd Lapointe, DOE’s […]

Paul Dabbar, the Department of Energy’s undersecretary for science, joined lawmakers and other officials at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina Thursday to dedicate the long-anticipated Salt Waste Processing Facility. The plant “is the final piece to what is an impressive and highly successful liquid waste program here,” Dabbar said in a DOE press […]