Office of Environmental Management (EM)

Workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state successfully transferred the first batch of highly radioactive sludge out of underwater storage in the K West Reactor Basin late Tuesday afternoon. The Department of Energy had a Tri-Party Agreement deadline, reset most recently in 2015, to start removing sludge from the basin by the end of […]

Allison Scott Majure has left her position as communications director for the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) to accept a similar post with Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), the new legacy cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in the state. Majure became a marketing and communications leader at N3B last […]

An Idaho environmental group said Wednesday it has significant concerns about an Energy Department plan to move 7,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste from the Hanford Site Washington state to the Idaho National Laboratory for repackaging. The idea has been kicking around DOE for a couple years but seems to be “ripening” in recent months […]

Liquid waste operations at the Savannah River Site restarted this week following a 15-month layup that included multiple delays to resumption due to maintenance issues at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). The DWPF is responsible for converting millions of gallons of radioactive liquid waste at the Energy Department facility in South Carolina into a […]

The Department of Energy has yet to determine whether certain members of the Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board (SSAB) had conflicts of interest that should have kept them from voting on an issue last month, sources said Tuesday. Dennis Foreman, a Pike County, Ohio, teacher who serves on the advisory panel, made a formal challenge […]

The Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG) last week elected a new member to its Board of Directors and re-elected another six members. First-time board member Bob Miklos is Battelle Energy Alliance’s director of project management at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to his LinkedIn profile. Miklos has 30 years of experience with nuclear facilities and […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., received 133 shipments of transuranic waste during the first five months of 2018, the same number it received for disposal during almost eight months of operation in 2017. That rounds out to roughly six shipments of TRU waste per week, based on about 22 […]

Watchdog group Hanford Challenge is objecting to a Department of Energy plan to classify the waste remaining in the Hanford Site’s C Tank Farm as residual waste, or waste incidental to reprocessing (WIR). The new classification would allow the remaining waste in the C Farm’s 16 tanks to be considered low-level radioactive waste and the […]

Vendors planning to bid on a new consolidated technical support services contract for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and other EM sites, should submit their bids no later than July 20. The DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center (EMCBC) issued the final request for proposals (RFP) for technical support […]

Bechtel, a major contractor for the Energy Department’s nuclear complex, announced Thursday it will move its corporate headquarters to one of Washington, D.C.’s Northern Virginia suburbs. The international engineering, procurement, and construction company said it will move corporate operations from Houston and San Francisco to Reston, Va., by the end of 2018. Bechtel already has […]

The Energy Department’s staggering environmental liability at its Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear sites keeps Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White “up at night,” she said Thursday in Washington, D.C. Environmental liability is one of the U.S. government’s larger line items, behind the federal debt and entitlement programs such as Social […]

The Energy Department and contractor AECOM said Thursday the last phase of building demolition is finished at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in upstate New York and cleanup should be completed this fall. A two-year demolition project for Buildings H2 and G2 ended last month on the property located at the Knolls Atomic Power […]

Liquid waste processing at the Savannah River Site almost restarted last month after a 15-month outage, but is instead slated to begin next week after workers fix a seal at the site’s major waste processing facility that allows treated waste to properly pour into the storage canister. Chemical operations at the 310-square-muile site near Aiken, […]

Road upgrades are due to begin this week around the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a byproduct of a settlement agreement between DOE and the state of New Mexico over a 2014 accident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday the first of […]

Washington Closure Hanford and the Department of Justice told a federal judge Thursday they had reached a settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit alleging the then-Hanford Site cleanup contractor knowingly awarded small business subcontracts to front companies. They told the judge they would execute the agreement on Thursday, but had not filed it with the […]

The latest version of the Senate’s fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act calls upon the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on repackaging of transuranic waste at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) after an April 11 incident in which the lids blew off four waste drums. It is “disturbing” that at least one of the […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., has resumed emplacement of transuranic waste that was suspended after detection of a misaligned drum on May 24. A recovery plan to fix the leaning drum within a seven-pack canister was approved May 29, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader said Wednesday in […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., took home 90 percent of its total potential fee for fiscal 2017. That percentage was good for $10.7 million in fees for the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2017. That was a better percentage than the […]

The New Mexico Environment Department said June 1 it was not ready to decide whether to change the way it measures the volume of transuranic waste disposed of underground at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The New Mexico agency plans a more extensive “Class 3” review of the site permit modification, which […]

Spending plans that would ensure the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) will have somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 billion for cleanup of Cold War nuclear sites in fiscal 2019 continue to make their way through Congress. On Friday morning, the House of Representatives approved its fiscal 2019 energy and water appropriations as […]

The Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex in Ohio is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and the state’s historic preservation office wants a voice in cleanup plans for the contaminated site. The Ohio History Connection said in a May 16 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it should be […]

Two candidates with ties to organizations funded by or concerned with the Los Alamos National Laboratory won primary elections Tuesday night that effectively assure them seats in the New Mexico state House of Representatives, according to unofficial results from the New Mexico secretary of state. Andrea Romero, former executive director of the local interest group […]

Fluor Idaho has ordered certain work to temporarily stop while it investigates an employee puncture injury Tuesday at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Energy Department’s Idaho Site. The employee was injured while doing cleanup tasks in a glove box at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP), DOE said in a Thursday news […]

A headline in the Wednesday edition of the Weapons Complex Morning Briefing incorrectly listed the total fees earned in fiscal 2017 by Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Energy Department contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The amount was $10.7 million.

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., has resumed emplacement of transuranic waste that was suspended after detection of a misaligned drum on May 24. A recovery plan to fix the leaning drum within a seven-pack canister was approved May 29, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader said Wednesday in […]

The Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex in Ohio is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and the state’s historic preservation office wants a voice in cleanup plans for the contaminated site. The Ohio History Connection said in a May 16 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it should be […]

The power company serving the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has started moving an overhead electric transmission line to make way for new structures to be built on the surface for the site’s planned Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System. Xcel Energy has already installed most of the power poles for the […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., took home 90 percent of its total potential fee for fiscal 2017. That percentage was good for $10.7 million in fees for the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2017. That was a better percentage than the […]

The Energy Department and the California Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) aim by the end of 2018 to issue a final environmental impact report for cleanup of DOE’s portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Site (SSFL). The state and federal agencies have been working closely to finalize steps for remediation of groundwater and […]

The New Mexico Environment Department said Friday it was not ready to decide whether to change the way it measures the volume of transuranic waste disposed at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The New Mexico agency also plans a more extensive “Class 3” review of the site permit modification, which requires more […]