Cleanup & Remediation

As of mid-week, there had been a total of 175 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said Wednesday during a webcast advisory board meeting. Vance, the Hanford site manager, provided the number in response to a question from a member of the […]

Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co. kicked off its 60-day transition period this week to become the new major remediation contractor at the Central Plateau area of Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, under a potential 10-year, $10-billion agreement. On Dec. 4 the joint venture comprising Amentum, Fluor and Atkins will take over from […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state needs to be better prepared to cope with additional failure of single-shell tanks holding radioactive wastes, according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General. That is a key takeaway from a report, dated Sept. 30 and posted this week. If many existing underground tanks fail there […]

The liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina hired 151 new employees with an average age of 37 during fiscal 2020. As a result, the average age of the 2,600-person workforce at Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is 48-years old, Phil Breidenbach, president & project manager of the […]

Unhappy with the proposals it has seen to date from the Department of Energy, the New Mexico Environment Department is moving toward dispute resolution to bridge differences over cleanup milestones at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The state is invoking dispute resolution over remediation milestones for 2021 under the parties’ 2016 compliance order on consent. […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has released its record of decision for cleaning up contaminated soil on its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif. Like Boeing, and the Department of Energy, NASA is one of three parties responsible for cleanup of the sprawling research site in the Simi Valley. […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Buffalo District submitted a proposed plan and launched the public comment period for the further decontamination of the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York. The Corps has already finished the decision-making process for the 10-acre Interim Waste Containment Structure (IWCS), an engineered landfill dating to the 1980s […]

Joe Franco, the Department of Energy’s deputy manager at the Hanford Site’s Richland Operations Office in Washington state, is leaving the agency to take another job. Tuesday was the “farewell” day at Richland for Franco, Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said during his update Wednesday to the Hanford Advisory Committee. Franco has been a DOE […]

As of this week there have been a total of 175 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said Wednesday during a webcast advisory board meeting. Vance, the Hanford site manager, provided the number in response to a question from a member of […]

The liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina hired 151 new employees with an average age of 37 during fiscal 2020. As a result, the average age of the 2,600-person workforce at Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is 48-years old, Phil Breidenbach, president & project manager of the […]

Unhappy with the proposals it has seen to date from the Department of Energy, the New Mexico Environment Department is moving toward dispute resolution to bridge differences over cleanup milestones at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The state is invoking dispute resolution over remediation milestones for 2021 under the parties’ 2016 compliance order on consent. […]

The Department of Energy said in a Tuesday Federal Register notice that it is withdrawing its designation of Waste Control Specialists in West Texas as its long-term storage site for elemental mercury. The DOE and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality previously granted the necessary approvals for the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) site in Andrews County […]

Two more people at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to late-Monday post on an official Hanford website. In addition, 12 more workers at the Hanford Site are undergoing testing for COVID-19, according to a notice posted on a Hanford website that provides daily updates […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Buffalo District has submitted a proposed plan and launched the public comment period for the further decontamination of the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York. The Corps has already finished the decision-making process for the 10-acre Interim Waste Containment Structure (IWCS), an engineered landfill dating to the […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state needs to be better prepared to cope with additional failure of single-shell tanks holding radioactive wastes, according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General. That is a key takeaway from a report, dated Sept. 30 and recently posted online. If many existing underground tanks fail there […]

As soon as Congress approved it, the Secretary of Energy cleared agency contractors to continue billing the government for paid time off given to workers who cannot do their jobs because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Secretary Dan Brouillette signed the order Oct. 1, allowing all DOE cleanup contractors to continue billing for such costs […]

Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co. kicks off its 60-day transition period today to become the new major remediation contractor at the Central Plateau area of Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, under a potential 10-year, $10-billion agreement. On Dec. 4 the joint venture comprising Amentum, Fluor and Atkins will take over from Jacobs […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has released its record of decision for cleaning up contaminated soil on its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif. Like Boeing, and the Department of Energy, NASA is one of three parties responsible for cleanup of the sprawling research site in the Simi Valley. […]

A Department of Energy advisory board is drafting a report to help the Office of Environmental Management develop a complex-wide priorities list for nuclear cleanup complex. The DOE Environmental Management Advisory Board could vote later this fall on a subcommittee report into how to make remediation of 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites more […]

Idaho-based North Wind Group got a three-year, $4.5-million task order for cleanup work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced the small-business set-aside award to North Wind this week in a press release. The new task order was issued under an existing indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract […]

The Department of Energy Tuesday awarded a joint venture led by Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Navarro Research and Engineering a $389-million contract to run the 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration is a team of Navarro and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Planned […]

The Department of Energy could release its request for proposals for infrastructure support services at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio by Thanksgiving. In a notice posted Sept. 25 on a federal procurement website, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said to expect a solicitation within 15 to 60 days for replacement of the current five-year, […]

Federal agencies were still open for business Thursday morning, after President Trump signed a stopgap budget bill that freezes most federal budgets at 2020 levels through Dec. 11. With appropriations set to lapse at midnight, the Senate on Wednesday cast votes to pass the measure with less than a working day left before the literal […]

Incumbent contractor Navarro Research and Engineering will provide support services to the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management through the first quarter of 2021 while a court fight continues over award of a new long-term agreement. In a notice posted Wednesday on a federal procurement website, the DOE said it will extend the expiration […]

There are 74 active cases of COVID-19 currently within the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management’s nuclear cleanup sites, an agency spokesperson said late Thursday. That is slightly up from the 70 active cases the prior week across the 16 former Cold War and Manhattan Project sites overseen by the office, but still less […]

The former chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board used procedural tactics to block board approval of a COVID-19 response plan that complied with federal best practices, the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog drafted a COVID-19 response plan at the onset of the pandemic, but […]

The former chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board used procedural tactics to block board approval of a COVID-19 response plan that complied with federal best practices, the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The independent federal nuclear health-and-safety watchdog drafted a COVID-19 response plan at the onset of the pandemic, but […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to finish the draft Environmental Assessment for the proposed decommissioning of the SM-1A reactor at Fort Greely in Alaska by March 2021, according to an update released Friday. The Corps visited the site in September to collect soil and environmental samples to complete the assessment and met with […]

“We do pretty high-hazard work in the complex, and we found it very interesting that folks who would climb into a reactor vessel or be moving fuel, or out in the DOE complex would be opening canisters to do repackaging — which is at some level pretty risky — were extremely nervous and extremely concerned […]

With Tuesday’s award from the Department of Energy, four major new contractors have been announced for the Hanford Site in Washington state since last December. Two of the four joint ventures have already received a green light to start transition from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, one contract award appears in doubt, and the latest […]