Office of Environmental Management (EM)

Longtime Department of Energy nuclear cleanup manager Ken Picha will join Strata-G, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based subcontractor, on Dec. 1. Picha, who has most recently been the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, is retiring from federal service at the end of this week, an industry source said […]

The contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico suspended transuranic waste emplacement during the latter part of October while it looked into worker illnesses linked to ventilation. Waste shipments have resumed, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) spokesman Donavan Mager said by email. Mager did not say how long work had been […]

International infrastructure company AECOM expects to be in the running for perhaps a half-dozen contracts from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in the next couple years. AECOM Chief Financial Officer Troy Rudd made the observation Monday during the company’s quarterly earnings call. The company expects to bid on five DOE cleanup contracts in […]

Dade Moeller, a subcontractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, has formed a joint venture with RC Engineering and Construction Management (RCECM), a small woman-owned business. The joint venture between the two Richland, Wash., companies is called ARC Professional Services. It will operate under an All Small Mentor-Protege Program agreement approved […]

The Department of Energy’s waste tank management contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a construction services subcontractor to support its work. AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), which manages about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in 177 underground tanks, issued the small business set-aside […]

More than 2,000 people submitted comments and signed petitions urging the Department of Energy to withdraw a proposal to reclassify the remaining radioactive waste in the Hanford Site’s C Tank Farm as low-level waste. The reclassification would be a step toward allowing DOE to fill the 16 tanks in the tank farm with concrete-like grout […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management did not wait until Black Friday to start shopping for ideas on the next round of nuclear cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Idaho National Laboratory. The office on Wednesday issued separate requests for information (RFI)/sources sought notices for upcoming solicitations at the two sites […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has “underperformed” its mission to protect the public from the hazards posed by defense nuclear weapons sites, and the quality of the small agency’s interactions with the Department of Energy has fallen to “an all-time low,” according to a study published this week. The DNFSB contracted the National Academy […]

Radioactively contaminated areas of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Ventura County, Calif., were not hit by the Woolsey Fire last week, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said Monday. “Our staff were able to access the site Saturday morning and assess damage caused by the fire,” DTSC spokesman Russ Edmondson said […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management on Wednesday issued a request for information/sources sought notice for completion of nuclear cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. This is part of the office’s market research for a potential solicitation for decontamination and decommissioning at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon. Incumbent Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth in […]

Longtime Department of Energy nuclear cleanup manager Ken Picha will join Strata-G, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based subcontractor, on Dec. 1. Picha, who has most recently been the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, is retiring from federal service at the end of this week, an industry source said […]

The Department of Energy’s waste tank management contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a construction services subcontractor to support its work. AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), which manages about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in 177 underground tanks, issued the small business set-aside […]

Radioactively contaminated areas of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Ventura County, Calif., were not hit by the Woolsey Fire last week, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said Monday. “Our staff were able to access the site Saturday morning and assess damage caused by the fire,” DTSC spokesman Russ Edmondson said […]

The contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico held off on transuranic waste emplacement during October while it looked into worker illnesses linked to ventilation. The transuranic waste shipments have resumed, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) spokesman Donavan Mager said by email Friday. The spokesman did not say how long work […]

A fire charring much of Southern California probably is not expected to spread contamination left by old nuclear operations at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in Ventura County, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said Friday. On Thursday, the so-called Woolsey Fire burned an area within the 2,800-acre site, used over the years […]

International infrastructure company AECOM expects to be in the running for perhaps a half-dozen contracts from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in the next couple years. AECOM Chief Financial Officer Troy Rudd made the observation Monday during the company’s quarterly earnings call. The company expects to bid on five DOE cleanup contracts in […]

A comparative analysis of different supplemental treatment methods for low-level radioactive waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site should be included in the results of an ongoing study, according to the second review report on the study by a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel. The panel is independently reviewing a study […]

By John Stang Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Wednesday its GeoMelt radioactive waste treatment system is scheduled to complete its testing by Dec. 31 and should begin operating in the first quarter of 2019. “We are making progress with the GeoMelt system,” Perma-Fix President and CEO Mark Duff said during the company’s quarterly earnings conference call. […]

By John Stang Paris-based waste and water management multinational Veolia said Thursday net income rose on a boost in revenue for the first nine months of 2018. “Veolia’s nine-month results are very satisfying. Revenue growth is sustained and solid, and provides operating leverage resulting in growth in net current income of 20 percent as to […]

The contractor that manages the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site took appropriate actions upon finding that a solution sample taken at a key processing facility contained a higher level of plutonium than it should have. The incident, characterized as an anomaly, resulted in no criticality issues, harm to the environment, or danger to […]

The Department of Energy Office of Enforcement is concerned that agency oversight was needed to identify that Hanford Site contractor Mission Support Alliance (MSA) had not adequately developed and implemented a software quality assurance program that met federal requirements. The office on Nov. 2 sent an enforcement letter to the support services provider for the […]

BWX Technologies has rolled up a trio of big “wins” in the Energy Department’s cleanup complex during the past 12 months and is hoping for more, President and CEO Rex Geveden said Wednesday. “There remain significant pending opportunities including the re-award of the Savannah River [Site] liquid waste contract, Savannah River management and operations,” along […]

The $15 million contract Centrus Energy was awarded last month for decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee demonstrates the company is tapping new markets while riding out tough times in the nuclear fuel business, managers said Thursday. The work authorization to prepare the K-1600 facility at the East […]

Fluor Idaho still does not have a date for resuming sludge repackaging inside the building at Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory where four drums of the radioactive waste overheated and blew off their lids on April 11. That is a key takeaway from a monthly report the lab’s cleanup contractor filed Oct. 30 with the […]

Jeff Griffin, a longtime manager around the Energy Department complex, is the new head of field operations for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). Griffin, previously associate director for environmental management at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, has been named EM’s new associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations. Assistant […]

Jacobs Engineering intends to compete for two major environmental remediation projects at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a senior executive said Tuesday. That demonstrates the Dallas-based company’s commitment to working at the massive cleanup program for the long term, according to Terry Hagen, Jacobs’ chief operating officer and president for its […]

Cathy Hickey has departed her post as president of Westinghouse Government Services, 17 months after the company opened a new office just outside of Washington, D.C., to increase its visibility within the Energy Department contracting world. Hickey “chose to leave via a voluntary separation package,” Westinghouse Electric spokeswoman Sarah Cassella said by email Wednesday. Company […]

While Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) easily won re-election Tuesday, his ability to influence the money flow to the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, and federal nuclear cleanup operations as a whole, appears to be on the decline. Simpson took more than 60 percent of the vote in Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District to decisively defeat Democrat […]

The Department of Energy could be at risk of millions of dollars of additional unnecessary costs at the Hanford Site in Washington state if it does not improve its oversight at the massive nuclear cleanup project, the agency’s inspector general said in a report this week. The Office of Inspector General released a summary of […]

BWX Technologies has rolled up a trio of big “wins” in the Energy Department’s cleanup complex during the past 12 months and is hoping for more, President and CEO Rex Geveden said Wednesday. “There remain significant pending opportunities including the re-award of the Savannah River [Site] liquid waste contract, Savannah River management and operations,” along […]