Office of Environmental Management (EM)

  PHOENIX — The Los Alamos National Laboratory expects next month to begin treating 60 drums that contain a combustible mix of nitrate salts and kitty litter like the one that burst open and released a small amount of radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014, officials said here Monday. The incident closed the transuranic […]

The Washington state House of Representatives last week voted 69-29 in favor of legislation that would make Hanford Site personnel more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation, but not before making a significant change to the bill. The state Senate now has its turn to consider Substitute House Bill 1723. The bill, modeled after a […]

PHOENIX — A facility needed to treat low-activity liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state will not be built until 2021 — the year before contractor Bechtel National must either prove its Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is ready to treat low-activity waste, or forfeit more than $150 million in fees, according to […]

Three Democratic Senators on Monday asked newly minted Energy Secretary Rick Perry to instate new whistleblower protections at the agency that the Trump administration delayed as part of a government-wide regulatory freeze. The whistleblower protection was part of a rule published in the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration that clarified DOE may assess civil penalties against contractors that […]

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting U.S. nuclear cleanup during the […]

The U.S. senators from Washington state are calling on the Department of Energy’s inspector general to assess the safety environment at the Hanford Site, including investigating its third-party administrator for workers’ compensation claims. The request comes after DOE notified the administrator, Penser North America, that it would end its contract without exercising all options for […]

PHOENIX — John “Rick” Dearholt, a former Jacobs Engineering hand who has worked on uranium enrichment complex demolition at the Oak Ridge Site, could soon become the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for environmental management. Reached by phone late Wednesday, Dearholt confirmed one of the biggest rumors circulating at the annual Waste Management Symposium here: that […]

Fluor’s chief operating officer is retiring at the end of this month, followed by the company’s chief financial officer before the year is over, the Texas-based Department of Energy contractor announced Wednesday. COO Peter Oosterveer has been with Fluor for 28 years in a number of positions, including as head of the company’s energy and chemicals […]

PHOENIX — A facility needed to treat low-activity liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state will not be built until 2021 — the year before contractor Bechtel National must either prove its Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is ready to treat low-activity waste, or forfeit more than $150 million in fees, according to […]

PHOENIX — Waste Control Specialists and the Department of Energy are negotiating an extension of the contract for the company’s continued storage of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a WCS executive said Tuesday. The current contract expires on March 31. WCS’ Andrews County, Texas, waste storage facility has held more […]

PHOENIX — With a wireless networking infrastructure one contractor called “young,” dealing with the torrents of data generated by monitoring the Hanford Site’s millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste can be challenging. “For those of you that have just tried to put a router in your house and make it work with your multiple […]

The Savannah River Site received additional time Monday for storage of transuranic (TRU) waste containers outside of regulated areas so the facility can better prepare to resume shipments of the material to the newly reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The Department of Energy site requested, from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control […]

PHOENIX — The Los Alamos National Laboratory expects next month to begin treating 60 drums that contain a combustible mix of nitrate salts and kitty litter like that one that blew open and released a small amount of radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014, officials said here Monday. The incident closed the […]

PHOENIX — The first three sites to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will be privately operated Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas; the Idaho National Laboratory, and the Savannah River National Laboratory, a senior DOE official said here Monday. DOE has not yet decided which of those […]

PHOENIX — Top officials in the Energy Department’s cleanup program of its Cold War nuclear complex are angling for a piece of the infrastructure spending spree promised by President Donald Trump, but the agency’s acting Environmental Management boss has yet to receive any formal direction from the new administration about which DOE programs, if any, qualify for such […]

Department of Energy cleanup contractor CH2M is scheduled to discuss its fourth-quarter 2016 results with investors at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday. The company also signaled the upcoming filings of its 10-K and 8-K forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is in the midst of a restructuring that is expected to involve moving […]

By Billy Spencer, Mayor, Piketon, Ohio. Scioto County Commissioner Mike Crabtree is misinformed with respect to the Village of Piketon’s long-held position on the cleanup and redevelopment plan for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) and the need for a third-party independent assessment. He should also know that the Village of Piketon is not alone […]

Demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant might stretch beyond a Sept. 30 regulatory deadline, the manager of the Energy Department’s Richland Operations Office told a citizens group Wednesday. While there is a “high probability we can get it done by the end of this year,” the project might only be “near-done by the […]

Uranium sequestration operations near the Columbia River in the Hanford Site’s 300 Area are expanding after a successful test project. Soil had earlier been excavated in places down to a depth of 15 feet in the 300 Area to remove most of the uranium that has put the groundwater at risk of contamination. The hope […]

The Savannah River Site is on pace to meet its fiscal 2017 goal to double-stack and safely store 200 canisters of treated radioactive waste, according to a site official. In October, liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) began stacking canisters of vitrified waste on top of each other in Glass Waste Storage Building 1 […]

While the Energy Department still has not said which of its cleanup sites will first send waste to the reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, recent correspondence between the New Mexico Environment Department and the agency shows DOE has made headway in approving shipments from three of the five sites on its shortlist. In a Feb. […]

Bechtel National and the Energy Department could have saved about $2 million if they had reached an agreement to cancel orders for equipment the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) did not urgently need, the agency’s inspector general wrote in a new report. Bechtel is building the plant at the site near Richland, Wash., to treat 56 million […]

The absence of senior leadership at the Trump administration’s Cabinet agencies threatens to leave contractors without clear policy direction on matters including the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons and cleanup complexes, executives said Tuesday. There is no imminent end in sight to this dilemma, they acknowledged. Panelists at the ExchangeMonitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit spoke two […]

Demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant might stretch beyond a Sept. 30 regulatory deadline, the manager of the Energy Department’s Richland Operations Office told a citizens group Wednesday. While there is a “high probability we can get it done by the end of this year,” the project might only be “near-done by the […]

While the Energy Department still has not said which of its cleanup sites will first send waste to the reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, recent correspondence between the New Mexico Environment Department and the agency shows DOE has made headway in approving shipments from three of the five sites on its shortlist. In a Feb. […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina is on pace to meet its fiscal 2017 goal to double-stack and safely store 200 canisters of treated radioactive waste, according to a site official. In October, liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) began stacking canisters of vitrified waste on top of each other in Glass Waste […]

Bechtel National and the Energy Department could have saved about $2 million if they had reached an agreement to cancel orders for equipment the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) did not urgently need, the agency’s inspector general wrote in a new report. Bechtel is building the plant at the site near Richland, Wash., to treat 56 million […]

The White House will pitch a big increase for defense spending in fiscal 2018, while other parts of the federal government will have to “do more with less,” President Donald Trump said Monday. “This defense spending increase will be offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government,” Trump said […]

With key Energy Department officials yet to be officially instilled by the new Donald Trump administration, the 2017 Waste Management Symposium kicks off next Monday, March 6, in Phoenix, Ariz. Sue Cange — a weapons complex veteran who is now the acting assistant energy secretary for environmental management — is on the bill to speak at […]

  Fluor Idaho officials will test 11 groundwater monitoring wells on the Idaho National Laboratory site this spring following the detection of the hazardous chemical tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, inside two of the wells last year. The PCE surprised state and federal officials when it showed up in concentrations well above safe drinking water levels during […]