Office of Environmental Management (EM)

The total number of vehicles at the Hanford Site with possible specks of radioactive contamination rose to 14 Wednesday after a spread of contaminants that appeared to start Friday at the facility’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. At least two vehicles might have been contaminated before workers drove them home Friday after completion of demolition of the […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies is interested in a potential 10-year, $4 billion support services contract at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. BWXT was one of many well-known DOE contractors to send representatives last week to information sessions on DOE’s draft request for proposals on the Hanford Mission Essential […]

Federal and New Mexico officials have scheduled a public meeting on Jan. 16 to discuss planning issues connected with a 2016 settlement agreement to revamp the approach to legacy cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. The New Mexico Environment Department will host the meeting, and DOE’s Environmental Management (EM) Los Alamos […]

Radioactive contamination has been found on eight vehicles that were parked at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant after a spread of contamination in recent days. Four of the vehicles belonged to employees working on plant demolition and two of them might have already been contaminated when workers left Hanford for the weekend on Friday […]

Changes must be made to Hanford Site’s Waste Encapsulation Storage Facility (WESF) to support moving 1,936 capsules of cesium and strontium out of underwater storage at the facility to dry storage nearby. The Department of Energy released more information about the project as it pursues a related modification to the dangerous waste portion of the […]

Centerra has won 96 percent of its potential fee award from the Department of Energy for providing a security force to protect the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In particular, DOE in a new award-fee scorecard praised Centerra-Savannah River Site for establishing and testing an “active shooter response plan.” Centerra was also cited for […]

Having just completed its $3.25 billion buyout of CH2M, Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering released new information Monday about its business going forward as a $15 billion engineering and infrastructure heavyweight. “Today, we are celebrating the creation of a new Jacobs,” Chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou said in a news release. In the release, Jacobs praised CH2M’s […]

The lure of a potential 10-year, $4 billion support services contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state prompted some of the biggest names within the Department of Energy weapons cleanup complex to sign up for an information session last week on a draft request for proposals for the work. The incumbent contract is held […]

After extending the deadline for an extra week due to Southern California wildfires, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has closed out the public comment period on two major reports on the cleanup of the radioactively contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The public comment period for the Santa Susana draft program environmental impact […]

Workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state on Friday finished demolishing the most highly contaminated section of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, its Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Demolition of the reclamation facility began in November 2016 and was almost complete before contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. issued a stop work order Wednesday following possible worker […]

The Department of Energy on Friday made official a long-rumored bureaucratic reorganization that puts the agency’s Cold War nuclear-cleanup programs under new management but leaves the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration essentially unchanged. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) roughly $6.5-million-a-year Office of Environmental Management (EM), steward of environmental remediation of Cold War nuclear weapons sites […]

After a three-year hiatus, the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., should resume salt mining in a matter of days, according to site management and operations contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP). The resumption would mark another key step toward a return to normalcy for the nation’s only permanent underground disposal site […]

Colorado-based CH2M on Friday officially became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering, CH2M announced in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. More details about the merger will be disclosed Monday, CH2M said at press time. CH2M shareholders voted Wednesday to approve the buyout. The preliminary results of the special meeting […]

With settlement talks continuing, parties in the chemical vapors lawsuit at the Hanford Site in Washington state have asked a federal judge to delay the trial date for another three months. Parties are requesting that the trial date be extended until Nov. 27, 2018. If a trial occurs then, it would be three years after […]

Following an extended back and forth with the Department of Energy, contractor Bechtel has only been required to repay a sliver of the $5.5 million in costs challenged in a federal audit for its work over several years at the Hanford Site in Washington state. A final determination, issued by DOE Contracting Officer Ronald Cone […]

The contaminated Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee could be encased in concrete, according to the top nuclear cleanup official at the Department of Energy site. Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) Manager Jay Mullis told an environmental advisory board in November that DOE is considering the plan. […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. stopped demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant for two days this week after laboratory results came back positive for air samples collected in seven monitors. The monitors were worn by workers on their lapels to detect radioactive contaminants near the air they breathe. A positive result could mean […]

Bechtel National is assigning a new project director for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) it is building at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state as it moves toward a new phase of work, the partial startup of waste treatment as soon as 2022. Peggy McCullough, the contractor’s current WTP project director, told plant […]

South Carolina is giving the Department of Energy extra time — more than a year in one case — to meet key milestones in treatment of liquid waste and closure of storage tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The previously unreported suspension agreement, signed on Nov. 6 by DOE, the South Carolina Department of Health and […]

The Department of Energy on Friday made official a long-rumored bureaucratic reorganization that puts the agency’s Cold War nuclear-cleanup programs under new management but leaves the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration essentially unchanged. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) roughly $6.5-million-a-year Office of Environmental Management (EM), steward of environmental remediation of Cold War nuclear weapons sites […]

The House Appropriations Committee this week unveiled a peculiar budget bill that would provide full-year fiscal 2018 appropriations for the Pentagon, but keep other federal agencies including the Department of Energy funded at prior-year levels through Jan. 19. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) introduced the bill Wednesday. The Department of Energy (DOE), like […]

CH2M shareholders voted Wednesday to approve the deal that will make the Colorado-based company a wholly owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering. The preliminary results of the special meeting of CH2M shareholders show more than 95 percent approval for the merger, the two companies said in a joint press release. The vote should clear the […]

The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) has agreed to ease the respiratory protection required for workers in a second waste storage tank farm at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Jeff McDaniel, elected president of the umbrella group for 15 Hanford labor unions in March, approved the decision. The move indicates […]

A particulate filter developed to survive the tough conditions and stringent demands at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant could have applications across the Department of Energy nuclear complex, according to Hanford officials. The filters were developed after initial testing showed that standard high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters used across the nuclear industry would not […]

South Carolina is giving the Department of Energy extra time — more than a year in one case — to meet key milestones in treatment of liquid waste and closure of storage tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The previously unreported suspension agreement, signed on Nov. 6 by DOE, the South Carolina Department of Health and […]

Navarro Research and Engineering earned more than 97 percent of its total potential award fee for its work on the Department of Energy’s Nevada Environmental Program Services (EPS) contract in fiscal 2017. Navarro garnered $835,975 of a potential $857,037 for the period from Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30, 2017, at the Nevada National Security […]

When the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico gets its permanent ventilation system installed in a few years, it will have to dispose of an increased amount of low-level filtration wastes, according to a recent supplemental analysis from the DOE. The permanent ventilation system’s new filter building will contain far more waste […]

Peggy McCullough, who Bechtel announced Friday would be leaving her post as project director at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, will be replacing John Howanitz as head of the company’s Nuclear Security, and Operations business based in Virginia. Bechtel said Friday that Brian Reilly, who like McCullough […]

The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) will have a new Bechtel National project director as it moves toward the partial startup of waste treatment as soon as 2022. Peggy McCullough, the current project director for the contractor, told plant staff Friday that she is taking a new assignment to lead Bechtel’s Nuclear Security and Operations […]

With settlement talks continuing, parties in the chemical vapors lawsuit at the Hanford Site in Washington state have asked a federal judge to delay the trial date for another three months. Parties are requesting that the trial date be extended until Nov. 27, 2018. If a trial occurs then, it would be three years after […]