Office of Environmental Management (EM)

The Richland Operations Office will review how its prime contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are passing down nuclear quality assurance requirements to subcontractors and qualifying them after questions were raised about the recently completed River Corridor Closure Contract. A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office audit report released on Feb. 17 found […]

The Energy Department will soon begin retrieving highly radioactive calcine waste stored for years at the Idaho National Laboratory. The initial phase of the retrieval project, expected to cost DOE close to $50 million and last through 2022, involves moving the powdered calcine waste out of the oldest No. 1 storage facility and into a […]

At some point in the future, the Energy Department will have to crank shipments of radioactively contaminated material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) into overdrive to meet an internal projection of roughly 20 shipments a week over the mine’s 35-year operational life. In the 35 years running through 2034, DOE thinks the New […]

The three agencies that oversee cleanup at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., shrugged off concerns from a local citizens’ board about converting one of several spring meetings about the former plutonium production site to a webinar from an in-person affair, a document published Tuesday shows. The Tri-Party Agreement Agencies — the Energy Department, the […]

Waste retrieval from the Hanford Site double-shell tank with an interior leak has been completed to the requirements of a settlement agreement between the Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology, according to DOE. The federal agency and Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions told the state that two technologies […]

The commissioner of the Ohio county south of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site has taken a local mayor to task for his resistance to the waste disposal facility DOE intends to build at the former uranium enrichment facility. Earlier this month, Mayor Billy Spencer of Piketon, the village of 2,000 adjacent to the Portsmouth cleanup, petitioned DOE to […]

At some point in the future, the Energy Department would have to crank shipments of radioactively contaminated material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) into overdrive to meet an internal projection of roughly 20 shipments a week over the mine’s 35-year operational life. In the 35 years running through 2034, DOE thinks the New Mexico […]

The Energy Department and some of its leading contractors are keeping quiet as the agency reviews bids for the new liquid waste contract at the Savannah River Site. The current contract with Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is set to expire in four months, and DOE has previously said it would award the follow-on deal in the first quarter […]

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 a […]

The three agencies that oversee cleanup at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., shrugged off concerns from a local citizens’ board about converting one of several spring meetings about the former plutonium production site to a webinar from an in-person affair, a document published Tuesday shows. The Tri-Party Agreement Agencies — the Energy Department, the […]

Hanford Site tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions has notified the Washington state Department of Ecology that it believes it has finished retrieving waste from double-shell Tank AY-102. That would wrap up the project ahead of the March 4 deadline established in a 2014 settlement agreement with the state. The agreement required that enough […]

The Richland Operations Office will review how its prime contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state are passing down nuclear quality assurance requirements to subcontractors and qualifying them after questions were raised about the recently completed River Corridor Closure Contract. A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office audit report released Friday found quality-assurance weaknesses in […]

Two Hanford Site workers received medical checks and were released to return to work after reporting an odor in the Department of Energy facility’s central area at the start of the day shift Thursday. The workers were in the 200 East Area but more than a mile from the closest waste tank farm, according to […]

Cold War nuclear cleanup managed by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for more than half of the federal government’s total environmental liability of $447 billion, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said this week. The cost of the remaining cleanup work across DOE’s nuclear complex was estimated at $257 billion as of […]

The Savannah River National Laboratory has opened an office in Richland, Wash., to support its work at the Hanford Site. The Department of Energy facility’s work has included leading the team of experts who produced the 2014 Hanford Tank Vapor Assessment Report and supporting the Office of River Protection plan to start treating low-activity waste […]

Four federal nuclear sites and one privately operated waste disposal facility will send a total of 128 shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) from April 2017 to January 2018, the Energy Department announced Tuesday. These will be the first waste shipments to WIPP following the February 2014 underground fire and […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look that year at possible problems at the plant. […]

The Department of Energy is taking steps to catch up lost time on demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant after an unusually cold and snowy winter delayed work by several weeks. As of Tuesday, the demolition project had lost the equivalent of 23 10-hour days this winter, or more than a month of […]

The Energy Department could develop a new mobile treatment unit to clean up more than 70 barrels of potentially explosive nuclear waste stored at a private contractor in Texas, a source in New Mexico said Tuesday. The 70 barrels, which contain a combination of plutonium-contaminated nitrate salts and organic kitty litter, represent the greater part […]

The Department of Energy is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the federal government’s environmental liability, which has more than doubled from $212 billion to $447 billion over the last two decades, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday. DOE represents 83 percent of that liability: $372 billion as of fiscal 2016; it is followed distantly […]

The Energy Department could develop a new mobile waste-treatment unit to decontaminate more than 70 barrels of potentially explosive nuclear waste stored at a private contractor in Texas, a source in New Mexico said Tuesday. The 70 barrels, which contain a potentially explosive combination of plutonium-contaminated nitrate salts and organic kitty litter, represent the greater part of […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look in 2012 at possible problems at the plant. […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s nuclear criticality safety program in fiscal 2016 fell short of Department of Energy requirements, but an improvement plan has been established, according to an annual nuclear criticality safety program metrics report submitted to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). The DNFSB asked DOE in February 2016 to provide a […]

Fluor Idaho officials say they plan to start testing again next week at the Idaho National Laboratory site’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, circulating simulated waste through the facility’s system for the first time in about nine months. The simulant run, to last 10 days, is intended to determine whether a newly designed auger grinder component […]

The Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services joint venture has started work on an Energy Department contract to process depleted uranium hexafluoride left over from Cold War uranium enrichment in Ohio and Kentucky. In late September, DOE awarded Mid-America Conversion Services a five-year, $318 million depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) treatment contract, unseating incumbent BWXT Conversion Services. Fluor […]

The Savannah River Site’s main waste processing facility will be offline for much of the year to allow for replacement of a key component. The Energy Department said on Feb. 3 that site liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is preparing to replace a melter in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which converts […]

The bench trial for the Hanford Site worker vapor protection lawsuit brought by Washington state and other plaintiffs will be postponed until March 5, 2018, Judge Thomas Rice ruled Monday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. The plaintiffs and defendants jointly requested the trial be delayed more than four months from Oct. 30, 2017, […]

Public tours are being offered again this year at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, the shuttered facility’s cleanup contractor announced Monday. “We are pleased to continue these special tours for the public to get a close-up view of the former uranium enrichment facilities while they are being addressed under the […]

A federal judge has dismissed South Carolina’s claim seeking $100 million for the missed plutonium disposal deadline at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs on Wednesday also sent another request against the Department of Energy – for the removal of 1 metric of weapons-usable plutonium […]

A Washington state House of Representatives committee heard testimony from ill Hanford Site workers and their families on Thursday that even critics of a proposed workers’ compensation bill called compelling. But those opponents told the House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee that while they were sympathetic to the suffering of the workers who testified, House […]