Office of Environmental Management (EM)

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received its first shipment of defense transuranic waste 20 years ago this week. The Energy Department, WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, and officials in southeastern New Mexico plan various activities in March and April to mark the 20th anniversary of the inaugural shipment, which […]

The $6.5 billion fiscal 2020 budget request for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would resume the practice of “bartering” excess government uranium in order to defray cleanup costs at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, helped win […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received its first shipment of defense transuranic waste 20 years ago this week. The Energy Department, WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, and officials in southeastern New Mexico are holding various activities in March and April to mark the 20th anniversary of the inaugural shipment, […]

The Department Energy’s Office of Environmental Management retained a firm to audit proposals for the potential 10-year, $13 billion Tank Closure Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state. A contract valued at about $415,000 was awarded to Maryland-based CohnReznick, which has done fee-reasonableness audits for DOE in the past. The contract for the proposal […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday defended his agency’s proposed $400 million-plus budget reduction at the Hanford Site in Washington state, even while the cost of cleanup is on the rise. “On one hand the department is telling us the mission is going to become exponentially more expensive,” even as it cuts the remediation budget […]

The Department of Energy is prioritizing returning the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico to full-scale emplacement of defense transuranic waste, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Tuesday. Completing a new underground ventilation system and taking advantage of a new accounting method for recording the volume of waste deposited in the salt mine near […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management has awarded a potential five-year, $4.5 million contract to a firm to assist with its Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program. The Environmental Management office on Monday announced the award to Technical Resources Group to help prepare a response to a transportation accident involving radioactive materials being shipped to or […]

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a friend of the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories who has spent the last two decades on Capitol Hill, on Monday announced he will not run for re-election in 2020. Rather than seeking a third term, Udall will leave the Senate in January 2021. Since 2009, Udall has occupied the Senate […]

The Department of Energy plans in fiscal 2020 to cut funding for cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington sate in part because of progress made and projects completed, according to detailed budget documents released Monday. In total, funding for the two DOE offices at Hanford would drop by more than $400 million from current […]

The Donald Trump administration on Monday rolled out its full fiscal 2020 budget request for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, which faces a roughly $700 million funding decrease from the current level. Overall, funding for the cleanup office would drop from almost $7.2 billion in fiscal 2019 to about $6.5 billion proposed for […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says the Energy Department should do more to reduce the risk of combustion of stored radioactive waste sludge similar to the April 2018 accident at the Idaho National Laboratory in which four drums blew off their lids. In a March 12 letter, the DNFSB asked Energy Secretary Rick […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is poised to give its blessing for Waste Control Specialists (WCS) to continue storing potentially problematic transuranic waste from the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory through late December 2020. The chief clerk for TCEQ is expected this week to issue an amendment to Waste Control Specialists’ state […]

A federal judge should declare a new Washington state workers compensation law constitutional and block a jury trial in a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice, the state wrote in a Friday court filing. The Justice Department has sued the state in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, arguing that the law, enacted […]

The Department of Energy could levy up to $33 million in disincentive fees against Parsons Government Services for the contractor’s failure to control costs and meet deadlines at the Savannah River Site’s $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), the agency said this month. Parsons is pushing back, saying the agency is not acting in […]

The Department Energy’s Office of Environmental Management retained a firm to audit proposals for the potential 10-year, $13 billion Tank Closure Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state. A contract valued at about $415,000 was awarded to Maryland-based CohnReznick, which has done fee-reasonableness audits for DOE in the past. The contract for the proposal audit […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has scheduled an industry day for prospective subcontractors April 10-11 in Santa Fe. Current and future subcontracting opportunities will be the focus of the event planned by Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B). On the slate are mandatory pre-bid meetings […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology has denied the Department of Energy’s application for a permit to cover Test Bed Initiative (TBI) work at the Hanford Site, but expressed support for the project. Despite the initial setback, the letter of denial issued March 15 also said there is a better and possibly quicker way for […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry will testify before the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee next week on his agency’s fiscal 2020 budget request. Perry is the only witness scheduled to appear before the panel at 10 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday at Rayburn House Office Building Room 2362-B in Washington, D.C. The subcommittee is led […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend the contract for Mission Support Alliance (MSA) to provide site-wide services at the Hanford Site in Eastern Washington by up to six months. Hanford DOE Manager Brian Vance said in a memo to site employees Tuesday that Richland Operations Office Deputy Manager Joe Franco was notifying MSA that […]

The Department of Energy is requesting more than $900 million for liquid waste treatment at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the largest chunk of a $2.67 billion proposal for all facility operations in fiscal 2020. That sum is the most in the DOE complex for nuclear cleanup sites. It is about $42 million more than what Savannah River is […]

The legacy cleanup vendor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has awarded a subcontract for a company to tear down an old processing building for radioactive liquid waste and do certain other work at Technical Area 21. Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) said Thursday the contract went to Albuquerque-based […]

A number of nuclear cleanup sites would make due with less money under the Department of Energy budget plan for the next fiscal year. On March 11, the agency rolled out the broad outlines of its fiscal 2020 budget, with nearly $6.5 billion planned for the Office of Environmental Management — down by over $700 […]

The Department of Energy indicated Monday it intends in the upcoming budget year to cut tens of millions of dollars from environmental remediation funding at some of its national laboratories. As part of the continuing rollout of the Trump administration budget plan for fiscal 2020, the Energy Department released preliminary funding tables for its laboratories. […]

Anyone visiting the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) these days should not count on finding a cheap hotel room around Carlsbad, N.M. Rooms are scarce and midweek rates can run from $148 per night at the Super 8, to $289 at the Days Inn, to $409 at the La Quinta Inns and Suites, […]

The Trump administration is proposing to shift management of cleanup of more than 20 radioactively contaminated former nuclear sites from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers back to the Department of Energy. The Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) would be placed into the portfolio of DOE’s Office of Legacy Management, accounting for nearly all […]

Demolition preparations have resumed at the X-333 Process Building at the Department of Energy’s shuttered Portsmouth Site in Ohio after a piece of old uranium-enrichment equipment caught fire there last week, an agency spokesperson confirmed Wednesday. The fire ignited at about 10:30 p.m. on March 14, after personnel with site cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth cut […]

Idaho state regulators are reviewing documents drafted by Fluor Idaho, which the company hopes will allow resumption of sludge repackaging this spring at the Idaho National Laboratory facility where four waste drums overheated and ejected their lids last April. The “corrective action plan” and “evaluation of the safety of the situation” reports are being discussed […]

The H-Canyon processing facilities at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina currently generate roughly 100,000 gallons per year of radioactive liquid waste, a figure expected to grow to about 200,000 per year in fiscal 2022. After fiscal 2022, the amount of liquid waste going from H-Canyon into the SRS liquid waste […]

By John Stang and Wayne Barber While it faces a potential 10-year ban on contracts with the Canadian government, SNC-Lavalin’s legal woes north of the border do not appear to automatically translate to similar troubles in the United States. The Montreal-based engineering and construction multinational is the parent company to Department of Energy contractor Atkins […]

The Energy Department continues to work on selecting a winning vendor to characterize, deactivate, and tear down some low-risk structures for the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management in Tennessee. In August 2018, the Energy Department issued a request for proposals for a small business set-aside contract, potentially worth almost $25 million over five years, […]