Cleanup & Remediation

The Department of Energy has named Brian Stickney deputy manager and chief operating officer for the Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site in Washington state effective this week. Stickney had been acting as deputy manager since October following the retirement of Joe Franco, Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance announced in a May 19 email […]

The Department of Energy and contractor Fluor Idaho said in a Tuesday press release the final shipment of radioactive waste has been placed into the 97-acre Subsurface Disposal Area at the Idaho National Laboratory. The disposal area, which began accepting waste in the 1950s and has since accepted laboratory-generated waste and shipments from the Rocky […]

Current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio this week filed a motion to dismiss one of the two class action lawsuits brought against those companies by local residents following the May 2019 disclosure of radioactive contamination of a public school outside the fence. The dismissal motion arrived at about […]

After a lawsuit by gold companies forced it to back off its initial selection of a commercial site in Texas for long-term storage of elemental mercury, the Department of Energy is again shopping around for a contractor and Waste Control Specialists is again one of the finalists. That is a key takeaway from DOE’s notice […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico now has a public website about its efforts to remediate contamination along a public road in Los Alamos County. Radioactive contamination was discovered in February 2020 within a 28-acre parcel of land along DP Road that DOE had already […]

After much anticipation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management on Thursday awarded a potentially 10-year, $6.4 billion cleanup contract at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition. The team, chosen from a field of five bidders, includes Dallas-based Jacobs, North Wind Portage, and small business teaming subcontractors Navarro, Oak Ridge […]

For the second time in three weeks, the number of confirmed active cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management worksites is below triple-digits. There are currently 65 active COVID-19 cases in the Environmental Management (EM) complex, a DOE spokesperson said by email Thursday. It represents a big drop from the […]

A group of plaintiffs who last year sued current and former Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have asked a federal court for a four-month delay in the case while they replace two Florida attorneys, one of which is apparently facing disbarment proceedings back home. The plaintiffs, including former Portsmouth security […]

An Oregon designer of small modular reactors has linked up with a venture to build four small reactors at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington. The same design company also  lined up an undisclosed amount of incoming cash and a pipeline for parts from a Japanese company.  Both transactions were announced Wednesday.  NuScale […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico now has a public website about its efforts to remediate contamination along a public road in Los Alamos County. Radioactive contamination was discovered in February 2020 within a 28-acre parcel of land along DP Road that DOE had already […]

The top fed at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has reversed course and will keep the mask mandate in place for now regardless of whether workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. After initially saying last week fully-inoculated employees could stop wearing face coverings as soon as Tuesday, Hanford’s site manager Brian […]

Bechtel, Reston, Va., and Fluor, Irving, Texas, are leading separate bids for the potentially $10-year, $21.5 billion management and operations contract for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, people familiar with the competitive landscape said this week. Amentum, Germantown, Md., is also in the mix as a partner, one of these people said. The […]

Effective Tuesday, May 25 fully-vaccinated workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state will no longer need to wear a face covering, the site’s manager Brian Vance said in an online memo to employees Wednesday. The directive is slated to go into effect about a week after all-hands letter from Vance to […]

Kirk Lachman, a longtime hand around the Department of Energy’s weapons complex and current field office manager of the agency’s Office of Environmental Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is retiring June 27. Lachman will be retiring from DOE after 30 years of federal service, a spokesperson for the agency said […]

A Northern Arizona University researcher, Michael Ketterer, recently reasserted findings from 2019 that radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio poses a concern for people outside the fence, and local leaders are using his analysis to press for federal money to replace a shuttered school. In an April 28 letter to […]

Leo Sain, a senior executive at Amentum who has led joint ventures across the Department of Energy weapons complex, has died at age 73. Most recently Sain served as the decommissioning and demolition and waste management sector lead at Amentum. He died May 13, according to an obituary posted by Weatherford Mortuary in Oak Ridge, […]

While the numbers won’t be out for another week, House and Senate committees used Wednesday hearings to press Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and other DOE officials about the progress of nuclear cleanup. During a four-hour hearing before the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, Granholm said the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2022 budget request […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is often described in Congressional hearings and other forums as one the most costly and complex cleanup projects in North America — if not the world. But it is this complexity that oddly appeals to David Bowen, who became the Washington state Department of Ecology’s nuclear […]

A Northern Arizona University researcher, Michael Ketterer, recently reasserted findings from 2019 that radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio poses a concern for people outside the fence, and local leaders are using his analysis to press for federal money to replace a shuttered school. In an April 28 letter to […]

While the numbers won’t be out for another week, House and Senate committees used Wednesday hearings to press Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and other DOE officials about the progress of nuclear cleanup. During a four-hour hearing before the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, Granholm said the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2022 budget request […]

The Department of Energy’s largest and most complex nuclear cleanup property is looking at relaxing its COVID-19 protocols soon but has made no changes yet, Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance said in a Tuesday memo to all employees. Likewise,  the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky are “for now” keeping their […]

Leo Sain, a senior executive at Amentum who has led joint ventures across the Department of Energy weapons complex, has died at age 73. Most recently Sain served as the decommissioning and demolition and waste management sector lead at Amentum. He died May 13, according to an obituary posted by Weatherford Mortuary in Oak Ridge, […]

House and Senate subcommittees were scheduled to hold hearings about the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2022 budget request on Wednesday, even though the White House was not expected to release the full budget request until May 27. The Senate-side hearing will be the first of the season dedicated to the civilian nuclear weapons programs managed […]

Bechtel, Reston, Va., and Fluor, Irving, Texas, are leading separate bids for the potentially $10-year, $21.5 billion management and operations contract for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, people familiar with the competitive landscape said Monday. Amentum, Germantown, Md., is also in the mix as a partner, one of these people said. The Savannah […]

Profits were about flat at Dallas-based Jacobs in its second fiscal quarter that ended April 2, something the international engineering and construction services company attributed to its March acquisition of a 65% stake in PA Consulting, which advises energy, defense and government clients. During the same period last year, Jacobs suffered a $122 million net […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility, the centerpiece of Department of Energy plans to empty tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina of 36 million gallons of radioactive waste, is back in operation after shutting down in late March. The Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) resumed its work on a limited basis May 3, […]

Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites were tracking 76 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday, down 30 from last week and the lowest weekly case count since the fall. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) case numbers were last this low during early October. The figures provided via email from an EM […]

The Department of Energy considers construction of a new 2.2-million cubic yard landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee vital to cleanup of contaminated sites the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a federal official said Wednesday.  The new onsite landfill will “make sure that we have enough disposal capacity,” […]

The Department of Energy is picking up its option to keep Centerra Group on through at least Oct. 7 as provider of security at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina while the agency continues to review a 10-year, $1-billion follow-on contract awarded in February to Securitas CIS. A DOE spokesperson said in an email […]

Early in-person voting started last week and runs through May 29, for the June 1 special election in New Mexico’s Congressional District 1, which is home to the Sandia National Laboratories. The seat was vacated by Rep. Debra Haaland (D), she was confirmed as the Joe Biden administration’s secretary of interior on March 16. The […]