Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) will leave the Senate Armed Services Committee and join the chamber’s Appropriations Committee, keeping intact an important legislative shield for nuclear sites in the Land of Enchantment. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) the majority leader, announced the committee assignments for the Democratic-controlled 117th Congress Tuesday on a call with the Senate’s Democratic […]

The Department of Energy and the prime contractor for the Waste isolation Pilot Plant on Jan. 31 completed an early test of the long-idle 700-C fan, expected by this summer to augment underground airflow pending completion of a major new ventilation system.  Construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, meant to increase airflow to […]

A standard box of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, stuck at a commercial site in Texas since 2014, has been approved for shipment to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. When that waste box is shipped there will be 74 remaining at Waste Control Specialists, Brian McGovern, […]

The Department of Energy and the prime contractor for the Waste isolation Pilot Plant on Sunday completed an early test of the long-idle 700-C fan, expected to augment underground airflow pending completion of a major new ventilation system.  Construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, meant to increase airflow to 540,000 cubic feet per […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has now confirmed a total of 243 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in the United States a little more than a year ago while the Hanford Site in Washington state is up to about 645 cases during the same period. That is […]

Before leaving office with the rest of the Donald Trump administration, then-Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette asked a federal nuclear safety board for a 60-day extension to produce a report on concerns about transuranic waste handling at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. In the letter dated Jan. 19, and posted last week on […]

There are currently 391 active COVID-19 cases within the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex, a spokesperson for the Office of Environmental Management said via email Thursday. The latest figure represents a decrease from the 423 active cases confirmed by Environmental Management (EM) the prior week as well as the 473 from two weeks ago.  […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., had 14 more employees test positive for COVID-19 between Jan. 13 and Jan. 19, the prime contractor said in a Saturday Twitter post, while a half-dozen more cases were confirmed Sunday at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Eleven of the 14 at the […]

Less than a month after officially calling off a $13-billion liquid-waste cleanup award at the Hanford Site, the Department of Energy has started procurement of a replacement pact called the Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract, with a draft solicitation expected by March. The draft request for proposals (RFP) will, unlike the now-revoked tank-waste contract awarded […]

There are currently 473 active cases of COVID-19 within the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex as of close of business on Wednesday, which is up significantly from the past two weeks. The latest figure was provided in a Thursday email from a DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson. The tally represents a jump […]

The Government Accountability Office in separate reports this week said Congress should look for a disposal path for transuranic waste now at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York, and the Department of Energy must do a better job of monitoring contractors for potential fraud. As of February 2020, DOE reported spending about $3.1 […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. plans to restart an old ventilation fan soon and was recently criticized by the Department of Energy for poor oversight of a major infrastructure project, according to a recently released scorecard. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) also accepted fewer shipments in the pandemic-beleaguered 2020, taking in […]

With the Donald Trump administration coming to an end in less than a week, longtime cleanup hand Todd Shrader is expected to take over as acting head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management office until President-electric Joe Biden has his own people in place. An industry source on Monday said to expect […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., took in 10 shipments of transuranic waste during December and 192 for all of 2020. The 2020 figure is a major drop-off, 100 fewer than the total of 292 for 2019, according to data from DOE’s public website for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant […]

This week the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico plans a short-duration test of its idle 700-C ventilation fan to increase underground airflow during certain work. The testing will last about four hours, according to a press release issued late Friday by the DOE’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Plant […]

With the Donald Trump administration coming to an end in a little over a week, longtime cleanup hand Todd Shrader is expected to take over as acting head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management office until President-electric Joe Biden has his own people in place. An industry source on Monday said to […]

Here’s some of the news Weapons Complex Monitor tracked over the last two weeks during the Exchange Monitor’s publishing break for the winter holidays. Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration this week began the process of taking over the Department of Energy’s 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Located in the 200-West […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is reviewing a request by Waste Control Specialists to continue holding drums of potentially-combustible transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at its Andrews County, Texas facility into December 2022. About 110 containers of the problem waste from the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico have basically been […]

As part of the omnibus spending package signed Dec. 27 by President Donald Trump, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will receive almost $7.6 billion for fiscal 2021, which is $131 million above its funding level for the 2020 budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2020. It is also about 22% more than […]

In a long-awaited report published this week, the Department of Energy estimated it could save up to $230 billion by lowering the classification level of certain radioactive waste from nuclear-weapons production — and while some neighbors of nuclear-cleanup sites welcomed the idea, it remained far from certain that Congress will give the agency clear legal […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is reviewing a request by Waste Control Specialists to continue holding drums of potentially-combustible transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at its Andrews County, Texas facility into December 2022. About 110 containers of the problem waste from the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico have basically been […]

The nuclear cleanup properties overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had 431 active cases of COVID-19 as of the close of business Wednesday. The figure, shared in a Thursday email by an Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson, is a jump from the 366 active cases reported by the office one week before […]

The COVID-19 pandemic did not take a holiday during Christmas week, with new infections reported at Department of Energy nuclear cleanup operations such as the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Supervisors at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) were notified of nine positive COVID-19 cases between […]

While the coronavirus pandemic affected nuclear cleanup at the Department of Energy in ways great and small, it did not slow down the acquisition process in 2020, when the Environmental Management Office awarded about $31 billion worth of new cleanup contracts. That includes $17 billion of contracts during the 2020 calendar year and some $14 […]

Concerns about the surging COVID-19 pandemic in New Mexico led the Department of Energy to reduce on-site staffing and slow certain operations at both the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, according to recent documents published by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.  At Los Alamos, operations are affected for both […]

The Department of Energy extended the bid deadline for a new Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contract by one week, to Dec. 23. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the extra time in a package of questions and answers published Dec. 11 on a procurement website. Previously, bids were due Dec. 14. In a final Q&A […]

WIPP Takes in 15 Shipments During November The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 15 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during November. There were five from the Idaho National Laboratory, six from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, three from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and one from the […]

The Department of Energy extended the bid deadline for a new Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contract by one week, to Dec. 23. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the extra time in a package of questions and answers on the business published Friday on a procurement website. Previously, bids were due today. The DOE acknowledged […]

The Department of Energy has picked up a six-month option keeping North Wind Portage on the job as the technical assistance contractor at the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico until June 2021. The basic contract and associated task orders were extended six months from Dec. 4, last Friday, to June 3, 2021, a spokesperson […]

The Department of Energy has picked up a six-month option keeping North Wind Portage on the job as the technical assistance contractor at the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico until June 2021. The basic contract and associated task orders were extended six months from Dec. 4, last Friday, to June 3, 2021, a spokesperson […]