Orano

A key Savannah River Site (SRS) waste treatment facility returned to operations last month after a three-month scheduled outage to address equipment concerns. The Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) receives low-radioactive salt solution that has been separated from radioactive sludge. That pre-separation material is stored together in more than 40 liquid waste tanks, which in total hold about […]

A key Savannah River Site (SRS) waste treatment facility returned to operations last month after a three-month scheduled outage to address equipment concerns. The Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) receives low-radioactive salt solution that has been separated from radioactive sludge. That pre-separation material is stored together in more than 40 liquid waste tanks, which in total hold about 35 […]

Editor’s note: This is the first 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 to date on news affecting Department of Energy […]

The Hanford Site’s tank farm contractor has agreed to pay a $5.275 million settlement to resolve federal allegations of time-card fraud. Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) was accused of submitting false claims to the Department of Energy between October 2008 and July 2013 concerning internal audit processes, along with time cards seeking payment for worker […]

Despite progress made to address vapors from radioactive waste storage tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state, union worker concerns have not decreased, according to a new review from the Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA). The review largely echoed findings released in late November by the Centers for Disease Control and […]

The Savannah River Site liquid waste tank farms hold less than 35 million gallons of waste for the first time since 1999, according to a Jan. 9 Facebook post from Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the Department of Energy facility’s liquid waste contractor. Since taking over the contract in 2009, SRR’s goal has been to rid the […]

The Energy Department is on track to empty most of the waste in a leaky double-shell tank at the Hanford Site in Washington state by a March 4 regulatory deadline — a job likely to cost more than $40 million, a DOE official said Wednesday. The final bill for draining waste from Tank AY-102 is […]

The Energy Department is on track to empty most of the waste in a leaky double-shell tank at the Hanford Site in Washington state by a March 4 regulatory deadline — a job likely to cost more than $40 million, a DOE official said Wednesday. The final bill for draining waste from Tank AY-102 is […]

French multinational nuclear company AREVA on Wednesday announced the formation of a new subsidiary to manage its operations in the United States. The move is part of the troubled company’s broader restructuring, in which it is focusing on nuclear fuel cycle work and selling off its reactor business. Sam Shakir, an executive with AREVA for […]

French multinational nuclear company AREVA on Wednesday announced the formation of a new subsidiary to manage its operations in the United States. The move is part of the troubled company’s broader restructuring, in which it is focusing on nuclear fuel cycle work and selling off its reactor business. Sam Shakir, an executive with AREVA for […]

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 […]

French multinational nuclear services provider AREVA on Wednesday announced the formation of a new subsidiary to manage its operations in the United States. The move is part of the troubled company’s broader restructuring, in which it is focusing on nuclear fuel cycle work and selling off its reactor business. Sam Shakir, an executive with AREVA […]

The European Commission announced Tuesday it had approved a capital financing plan intended to enable troubled French nuclear multinational AREVA to restructure its operations. The French state, which owns 86.5 percent of AREVA, intends to provide the company with 4.5 euros ($4.8 billion) in capital. AREVA has also received offers from strategic investors to supply […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The New Mexico Environment Department has given the U.S. Energy Department the OK to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), removing one of the last major hurdles to resuming transuranic waste disposal at the site after a nearly three-year shutdown. In doing so, the state mandated that DOE and WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) begin […]

Bechtel National defended its progress on construction of the crucial Waste Treatment Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state following a Tuesday Twitter strike from a local nuclear watchdog. The sharply critical Hanford Challenge on Tuesday chided Bechtel for earning a “failing grade” on its work on the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) in […]

The Energy Department will not commit to reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) by Dec. 31, an agency official told local stakeholders Thursday. “Our goal, based on everything we know, continues to be December,” Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a town hall meeting webcast from Carlsbad, N.M., some 40 miles […]

New Mexico state regulators have completed a critical review of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, but have yet to disclose the results. “Once our inspectors have compiled their observations, we will formally notify WIPP of the results of the inspections,” New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Secretary Butch tongate said in a press […]

The Energy Department is expected to announce Thursday whether the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is ready to reopen its doors for nuclear-waste disposal after a nearly three-year pause. DOE finished its final operational readiness review of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) earlier this month. The two-week checkup was designed to gauge whether contractor Nuclear […]

The Energy Department’s final review of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s recovery effort uncovered 21 punch-list items the agency’s Carlsbad Field Office and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership must address before the mine can reopen after its nearly three-year pause. In addition to those 21 so-called corrective actions, DOE prescribed 15 fixes that the local field […]

Costs will soar and deadlines will go unmet at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., if workers there keep wearing gear to protect them from noxious fumes leaking from underground waste tanks, the Energy Department and its tank-farm contractor said this week. In documents published Wednesday, the AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) estimated the cost of […]