Office of Environmental Management (EM)

A compromise budget passed by Congress this week would fund the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management at almost $7.5 billion. President Donald Trump is expected today to sign the fiscal 2020 domestic priorities and international assistance minibus, which encompasses appropriations bills for a long list of federal agencies. The House approved the bill […]

While the clock ticks down on 2019, the U.S. Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has yet to issue a draft request for proposals for a new remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The agency said in a July procurement notice it planned to issue the draft RFP within 60 days, which […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday denied a bid protest over a five-year, $137 million contract issued to a Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve) affiliate to provide technical support to the U.S. Energy Department’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO). A rival bidder, Strategic Management Solutions Inc. (SMSI), filed its initial protest on Sept. 9, followed by […]

The U.S. Government Accountability Office wants the Department of Energy to fulfill a 2007 pledge to manage three former uranium enrichment plants in an integrated manner. The DOE Office of Environmental Management is supervising cleanup of retired facilities in Piketon, Ohio, Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., as three independent sites, which is costly and […]

The U.S. Department of Energy is considering a stand-alone contract for management of its Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. The DOE Office of Environmental Management on Wednesday issued a request for information/sources sought notice for management and operations of the government lab, which is currently under the full Savannah River Site contract. The […]

The U.S. Energy Department debriefings on two major contract awards announced this month at the Hanford Site in Washington state will wait until January, two sources said this week. On Dec. 12, Central Plateau Cleanup Co., comprised of AECOM, Fluor, and Atkins affiliates, won the potential 10-year, $10 billion contract for ongoing remediation of Hanford’s […]

The two offices at the U.S. Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state would enjoy higher funding in a compromise appropriations bill for fiscal 2020, according to supporting material released Tuesday. The energy and water development bill agreed to by the House and Senate as part of a larger appropriations package would fund Hanford’s Richland […]

Veolia has won a contract to build what it describes as a “water detention” facility at the U.S. Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. Veolia Nuclear Solutions-Federal Services said Tuesday that DOE vendor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has awarded it a subcontract to build a system to contain any runoff from demolition of the X-326 process building […]

The U.S. Energy Department on Tuesday issued its final request for proposals (RFP) for the Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning, and Removal contract, which could be worth up to $3 billion over 10 years. The first of what is expected to be many task orders under the multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract would cover removal for an excess […]

Washington Department of Ecology Deputy Director Polly Zehm is retiring from state service at the end of January, just a month after her boss, agency spokesman Randy Bradbury said Monday. Zehm served more than 22 years with the agency, about eight of them as deputy director, according to an online biography. She sent an internal […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would receive almost $7.5 billion under a compromise fiscal 2020 appropriations bill released by House and Senate lawmakers on Monday. That’s equal with the Senate Appropriation Committee’s energy and water development bill, approved in September, and well above the $7.2 billion in last year’s appropriation: an amount roughly […]

A draft request for proposals for a new cleanup contract at the U.S. Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) could be released by late December, according to a new procurement notice. The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Dec. 11 notice on a federal procurement website that the draft document should be […]

While the clock ticks down on 2019, the U.S. Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has yet to issue a draft request for proposals for a new remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The agency said in a July procurement notice it planned to issue a draft RFP within 60 days, which […]

The compromise National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2020 would allow almost $2.1 billion for defense environmental cleanup operations the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Defense environmental cleanup is the largest tranche of funding for Hanford and other properties managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. In total, the office would […]

A defense policy bill on the verge of passage would require the U.S. Energy Department to provide Congress with anticipated costs of complying with court-enforced consent decrees at nuclear cleanup sites. The final version of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed easily out of the House of Representatives Wednesday on a vote […]

Two companies are working together to extract rare isotopes for cancer treatment research from nuclear waste at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. The project was unveiled in late November by Isotek Systems, a DOE contractor that oversees management of uranium-233 stored at ORNL, and TerraPower, a company co-founded […]

AECOM has named Bruce Covert as deputy general manager at the Waste Treatment Completion Co., based at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Waste Treatment Completion Co. is a joint venture formed by Bechtel and AECOM in January 2017 that acts as a subcontractor to Bechtel National for startup of low-activity waste vitrification […]

Less than two months after U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) announced plans to leave Congress, several declared candidates are jockeying to take his place. Three Democrats and three Republicans have filed to run in their respective party primaries on May 19, 2020, according to the Ballotpedia website. The victors would then square off in the […]

A major defense policy bill would effectively block the U.S. Department of Energy from applying its new interpretation of high-level radioactive waste during fiscal 2020 in Washington state. That would cover the Hanford Site, a former plutonium production complex that is DOE’s largest cleanup project and home to much of its high-level waste. The fiscal […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology is threatening to fine the U.S. Energy Department for withholding important data about operations at the Hanford Site. For its part, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management claims the state misunderstands the level of access allowed under the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement that governs cleanup at the former plutonium production complex. […]

The Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) resumed operations last week, ending a four-month scheduled outage that allowed workers to tie the $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) into the rest of the liquid waste system at the Department of Energy complex in South Carolina. The DWPF is again treating radioactive sludge […]

Interim containment measures are underway on the eastern boundary of the chromium plume at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) Manager Doug Hintze recently told the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities board. In his Nov. 15 briefing to the board, Hintze highlighted […]

U.S. Department of Defense senior executive Tom Mooney is apparently becoming the new chief of staff at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. Mooney is the current chief of staff for the Pentagon’s Office of the Chief Management Officer, according to a source who said the federal manager stopped by DOE headquarters in Washington, […]

The U.S. Energy Department plans by early 2020 to issue a final request for proposals for deactivation, decommissioning, and removal of excess facilities across the nuclear weapons complex. The agency posted a notice Dec. 5 saying the final RFP on the contract, potentially worth $3 billion over 10 years, should be released within 30 days. […]

The U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) would move to keep inspectors on the job at Department of Energy defense nuclear sites beyond Dec. 20, if the federal government shuts down when the current stopgap spending measure expires. In the event of a government closure, “the Chairman may designate resident inspectors at designated DOE defense […]

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday awarded Waste Control Specialists (WCS) a task order for long-term storage of elemental mercury in existing buildings on its Andrews County, Texas, property. The agency’s press release did not reveal the value of the deal to lease WCS storage space for up to 6,800 metric tons (7,480 tons) […]

The U.S. Energy Department said Thursday it has awarded a potential 10-year, $10 billion contract for ongoing remediation of the Hanford Site Central Plateau in Washington state to a joint venture of AECOM, Fluor, and Atkins. The proposal by Central Plateau Cleanup Co., as the partnership is known, provides the best value to the federal […]

New U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette assured a Senate committee recently that steps are being taken to tighten his department’s shipment of radioactive waste for disposal at the Nevada National Security Site. Brouillette, at the time deputy energy secretary, listed several measures in a written response to a question submitted by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto […]

Members of the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board would generally not be allowed to serve in expired terms any longer, if Congress’ compromise 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) becomes law. The measure would make an exception in cases where the departure of a board member would leave the nominally five-member body without its […]

Cost and schedule issues at the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state have prompted the U.S. Energy Department to downgrade the performance of facility construction and operations contractor Bechtel National. That’s one of the observations in a semiannual report from the DOE’s Office of Inspector General regarding its work. This report […]