Office of Environmental Management (EM)

Wary that his village will become known only for the pile of radioactive waste the Energy Department plans to leave behind after it cleans up the nearby Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the mayor of Piketon, Ohio, is pitching the agency on a plan to reinvent the former uranium enrichment site as a DOE technology hub. […]

At least one Energy Department rule, which would strengthen protections for whistleblowers at agency contractors, was delayed by the regulatory freeze President Donald Trump put in place last month, a DOE spokeswoman confirmed Thursday. The new rule, published by now-former President Barack Obama’s administration, clarified that DOE may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against […]

The village of Piketon, Ohio, wants more time to respond to the Energy Department’s plan to lease or sell substantially all of the land now occupied by the agency’s Portsmouth Site following cleanup of Cold War-era uranium enrichment facilities there, according to a village resolution dated Feb. 6. The village is seeking a 60-day extension to respond […]

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, […]

The Energy Department’s National TRU Program convenes a two-day meeting tomorrow in Carlsbad, N.M., with major decisions looming regarding restarting transuranic waste shipments to the nearby Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The meeting will take place at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, some 40 miles west by road from WIPP: the country’s only permanent deep-underground disposal […]

The liquid waste management contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is preparing to replace a melter in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), DOE said in a press release Friday. A Melter 2 heater stopped functioning on Feb. 1 and cannot be repaired, the release says. Savannah River Remediation is expected to need about […]

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 […]

Nuclear-cleanup sites across the country might learn next week when they may resume shipping radioactively contaminated material and equipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Officials from cleanup sites overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) are expected to gather at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office on Feb. 7-8 for […]

Chris Kemp left his job as deputy federal project director for retrieval and closure at the Energy Department’s Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site for another DOE job, an agency spokesperson said last week. Kemp, who remains at the Washington state site, is now director of the environmental compliance division at the Office […]

The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico are winnowing down the mine’s post-reopening punch list of fixes, a DOE spokesperson said Monday. After last year’s DOE-led operational readiness review, the agency identified 15 fixes for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and the local DOE […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is seeking approval from agency headquarters to redirect money not needed for salt waste work toward other liquid waste missions. The DOE facility in South Carolina, like the rest of the federal government, is currently being funded at fiscal 2016-enacted levels under a budgetary continuing resolution that expires […]

Fluor Idaho officials say they expect to finish retrieving transuranic waste at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project in Idaho before the end of the month. Fluor Idaho President Fred Hughes last week said the Idaho National Laboratory site cleanup contractor would finish removing the final 28 boxes, or 89 cubic meters, […]

Energy Department officials say exhumation work remains well ahead of schedule at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex, where transuranic waste generated from nuclear weapons manufacturing was buried in the 1950s and 1960s. Officials last week said they have exhumed 4.5 acres of a minimum requirement of 5.69 acres of “target” waste since […]

An Environmental Protection Agency transition team official for President Donald Trump expressed interest in picking up the pace of cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. Trump tapped Washington state Sen. Doug Ericksen (R) to serve as one of 10 transition team members for the EPA in Washington, D.C.; the lawmaker also is the […]

Demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant is expected to resume next week following a radioactive contamination spread found last week at the Energy Department facility once used to shape plutonium for insertion into nuclear weapons. At about 4:45 p.m. Jan. 27 a radiation monitor issued an alarm near the demolition area of the […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has pushed back by up to six months the date for rendering the Energy Department’s 60 year-old X-326 uranium enrichment building cold and dark, according to a senior company executive. “[O]ur goal in the X-326 is to be ‘cold & dark’ by the end of this calendar year,” Dennis Carr, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth’s program director, […]

Nuclear-cleanup sites across the country might learn next week when they may resume shipping radioactively contaminated material and equipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Officials from cleanup sites overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) are expected to gather at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office on Feb. 7-8 for […]

A Richland, Wash., resident has voluntarily withdrawn a lawsuit demanding that now-former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy issue or deny the Hanford Site air operating permit required under the federal Clean Air Act. Attorneys for Bill Green filed the notice of voluntary dismissal on Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. Judge Salvador […]

The spread of radioactive contamination outside the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant has stopped demolition, but work is expected to resume later this week. At about 4:45 p.m. Friday a radiation monitor issued an alarm near the area of the plant now undergoing demolition. About 10 minutes later the spread of radiation near the demolition site […]

The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico are winnowing down the mine’s post-reopening punch list of fixes, a DOE spokesperson said Monday. After last year’s DOE-led operational readiness review, the agency identified 15 fixes for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and the local DOE […]

Chris Kemp left his job as deputy federal project director for retrieval and closure at the Energy Department’s Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site for another DOE job, an agency spokesperson said Friday. “Chris made a lateral move effective the beginning of the month,” the official said by email. Kemp, who remains at the […]

Former Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Monica Regalbuto will remain at the Energy Department as a senior technical adviser for the agency’s $6-billion-a-year legacy nuclear cleanup program, the longtime DOE hand said in a farewell message to colleagues. Weapons Complex Morning Briefing obtained a copy of Regalbuto’s letter. “I am pleased and honored to continue to be part […]

The Energy Department may reclassify its West Valley Demonstration Project as a defense nuclear site, upping the federal funding for which the former spent fuel reprocessing facility is eligible, a local New York newspaper reported last week. Former Energy Sec. Ernest Moniz notified Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of the possibility Thursday, the Olean Times Herald […]

Plaintiffs and defendants have agreed to mediation in an attempt to settle the lawsuit over worker protection from tank waste vapors at the Hanford Site in Washington state. They filed a joint motion in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington asking the judge to extend the schedule in the case to allow time for mediation. […]

A five-year, fixed-price, indefinite-quantity/indefinite-delivery technical support contract for the Energy Department’s Moab site in Utah has gone out for bids as a small business set-aside, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management announced Thursday. The Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) technical assistance contract covers services for the Utah cleanup site including: records management; […]

It was not immediately clear whether a federal hiring freeze instituted by the newly installed Donald Trump administration has affected the legacy nuclear cleanup by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), which since Trump’s inauguration had posted only a single vacancy to a federal job site. The listing on USAJobs.gov for a […]

The Energy Department and contractor Fluor Idaho have decided to delay by several years the demolition of an iconic nuclear reactor dome at the Idaho National Laboratory. Officials planned to tear down the dome of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II last fall — one of the final steps of the EBR-II facility decontamination and decommissioning process […]

  The Hanford Site’s Office of River Protection has obtained samples of glass up to 2,000 years old to help it learn more about how the substance ages as the Department of Energy facility prepares to vitrify, or glassify, tank waste. The ancient glass is being studied to predict how glassified waste might age over […]

Energy Department contractor North Wind Group, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, said Friday it has acquired fellow DOE contractor Portage, also of Idaho Falls, in an all-stock deal. Other terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Portage will operate as a North Wind subsidiary, bringing the parent company’s headcount to about 1,100 employees, according to a […]

Susan Cange, second-highest in the chain of command at the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office, became acting assistant secretary for environmental management on Friday. Cange, a career civil servant who joined the Office of Environmental Management in Washington, D.C., from the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee late last year, replaces Monica Regalbuto on a temporary […]