Office of Environmental Management (EM)

Pocatello, Idaho-based SUNSi JV has secured a contract worth as much as $4 million over five years to provide a host of technical services at multiple Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM) sites. The time and materials, indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract covers support activities in quality assurance, safety, radiological protection, emergency management, safeguards […]

CARLSBAD, N.M. — Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday put the incoming Donald Trump administration on notice that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) ― the nation’s only deep-underground nuclear waste disposal site ― is too important to fail. Less than two weeks before the president who nominated him leaves office, Moniz headlined a group […]

The entire Washington state congressional delegation on Monday urged President-elect Donald Trump to make environmental cleanup, worker health, and the safety of nearby communities at the Hanford Site a priority in his administration. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) organized the letter sent to Trump, which was also signed by Sen. Patty Murray (D) and the state’s […]

Roughly 26,000 gallons of waste remains to be extracted from Tank AY-102 at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Department of Energy’s waste contractor for the former plutonium production facility said Friday. Washington River Protection Solutions on March 3, 2016, began retrieving the estimated 800,000 gallons of liquid and sludge from the double-shell tank, where […]

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz will make two high-profile public appearances this week as he prepares to leave office in a matter of days. Moniz will offer comments during the formal reopening at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which last week conducted its first emplacement of Energy Department transuranic waste in nearly three years, […]

The Energy Department late Friday released a draft environmental impact statement for soil and groundwater cleanup at the former rocket and atomic test site at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif. The overdue draft — DOE once thought it would finish the Santa Susana environmental impact process last year — examines a […]

The Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor earned 94 percent, $23.2 million out of a possible $24.6 million, of its performance award and incentive fees for fiscal 2016. On the recently released performance scorecard, the Department of Energy highlighted Savannah River Remediation’s (SRR) response in February to a leak in an evaporator pot, which slowed […]

South Carolina has hit the restart button on a multimillion-dollar fine over a missed plutonium disposition deadline at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS). A 2003 agreement between the state and DOE requires the federal government to process 1 metric ton of plutonium at SRS through the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), […]

A waste disposal project at the Savannah River Site took another step forward recently when the facility’s liquid waste contractor conducted a successful leak tightness test for Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6). SDU 6 is the first 30-million gallon, megavolume salt waste disposal concrete unit constructed at the Department of Energy site in South […]

Hanford Site tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) received 77 percent of the award fee available for fiscal 2016, down from 88 percent for the previous budget year, according to a Department of Energy scorecard. “WRPS performed adequately through a turbulent year, but there were times when substantial ORP [DOE Office of River […]

The Energy Department has to date spent about $785 million on its Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory, a DOE spokeswoman said, a tally that is more than $200 million over budget. The system’s budget was capped at $571 million in 2010, while a 2006 estimate had said the facility — designed […]

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) has wasted no time in inviting President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary to visit the Hanford Site. Newhouse issued an invitation to former Texas governor Rick Perry in a letter Thursday. Perry, also a former two-time presidential candidate, famously forgot the Department of Energy during a 2011 debate as one […]

The next head of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management could be a New York attorney who last served DOE in the Office of the General Counsel. Two sources this week said the incoming Donald Trump administration is considering Gary Lavine to head DOE’s $6-billion-a-year Cold War nuclear-cleanup program as assistant secretary for environmental […]

The recently reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) could be ready to accept new shipments of nuclear waste from across the Energy Department’s nuclear complex by May, under an ambitious schedule being discussed internally in Carlsbad, N.M. For that to happen, WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) must bury transuranic waste marooned above ground at the site’s […]

The Energy Department may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against whistleblowers within their ranks, under a new agency rule that goes into effect Jan. 26. The agency released a summary of the final rule late last year in the Federal Register. Senate Democrats from Washington state and Oregon, major stakeholders in the cleanup of the […]

The Department of Energy made significant advances in nuclear security and nonproliferation operations during the eight years of the Obama administration, as well as in cleaning up the legacy of its Cold War nuclear weapons operations, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Thursday in his Cabinet Exit Memo. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding “accelerated the […]

The main cleanup contractor at the Hanford Site’s central plateau started tearing down the infamous “McCluskey Room” at the Plutonium Finishing Plant on Dec. 30, the Energy Department said Wednesday. The room, officially called the Americium Recovery Facility, is where Hanford worker Harold McCluskey was exposed to a massive dose of americium by a glove box […]

Technicians with Nuclear Waste Partnership have moved transuranic waste into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for the first time in nearly three years, the New Mexico Environment Department said late Wednesday in a press release. Closed since February 2014 following an accidental underground radiation release and earlier, unrelated undergound fire, WIPP received Energy Department clearance […]

A waste disposal project at the Savannah River Site took another step forward recently when the facility’s liquid waste contractor conducted a successful leak tightness test for Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6). SDU 6 is the first 30-million gallon, megavolume salt waste disposal unit constructed at the Department of Energy site in South Carolina. Once complete, […]

Jeffrey Carswell has been promoted to deputy manager of the Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, putting an end to talk that one of the leading figures in the agency’s years-long drive to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) was headed up the road to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Carswell — one […]

The Energy Department has to date spent about $785 million on its Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory, a DOE spokeswoman said, a tally that is more than $200 million over budget. The system’s budget was capped at $571 million in 2010, while a 2006 estimate had said the facility — designed […]

The Energy Department may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against whistleblowers within their ranks, under a new agency rule that goes into effect Jan. 26. The agency released a summary of the final rule last week in the Federal Register. Senate Democrats from Washington state and Oregon, major stakeholders in the cleanup of the Hanford […]

The spread of radioactive and hazardous contamination in the Hanford Site’s REDOX processing complex is escalating, according to a new Department of Energy engineering evaluation and cost analysis. The plant is not expected to be demolished until about 2032, but might be left standing longer due to its proximity in central Hanford to the 222-S Laboratory. […]

It will take somewhere between nine months and a year longer than hoped to get 27 new sensors for the Hanford Site’s double-shell waste storage tanks in working order, the Energy Department disclosed last week. DOE was supposed to have the sensors inside the annulus of Hanford’s 28 double-shell tanks working by December 2016, per a […]

URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) scooped up nearly all of its available award fee for demolition and decommissioning at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee in the six months ended Sept. 30, according to the contractor’s latest award-fee scorecard. During the period just scored, UCOR earned some $3.4 million in fees, good for about 94 […]

A senior official at the Office of River Protection (ORP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state will early next year become deputy manager of the Richland Operations Office (RL) at the Department of Energy facility, according to an announcement Wednesday. Tom Fletcher currently is the DOE assistant manager for start-up, commissioning, and integration of […]

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) has resumed work to empty waste from Hanford Site Tank AY-102 as it faces a March 4, 2017, retrieval deadline under a settlement agreement with Washington state. The Department of Energy’s Hanford tank farm contractor halted work on the tank leaking waste between its two shells this spring to change out […]

Cartridge filters performed within an acceptable range in testing of their potential use to protect workers against chemical vapors from radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a preliminary evaluation of the trial. However, Stoneturn Consultants, which wrote the preliminary report, said more testing is needed. Workers now are required to […]

The site tour and pre-soliciation conference for the Department of Energy’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) technical assistance contract last week drew at least 42 attendees representing more than 30 organizations. The department on Dec. 1 issued a draft request for proposals for the contract, which would cover services for the Utah cleanup site including records […]

A new $3 billion modification for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant project makes clear the Energy Department and contractor Bechtel National intend to meet their 2022 schedule for beginning liquid-waste treatment, without closing the door on a legally authorized delay into 2023. For years, Bechtel and DOE have said the facility the company is building […]