Cleanup & Remediation

The Port Hope Area Initiative has completed transport of radioactively contaminated soil from the Center Pier in Port Hope, Ontario, to a nearby long-term holding facility. The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories-managed cleanup program last week tweeted before and after photos of the pier – the first showing the tarp that previously covered the soil and the […]

ICE Service Group on Monday denied patent infringement claims made in a lawsuit from a competitor, instead accusing the company of “brazen industrial espionage.” Clinton, La.-based PacTec, which makes industrial containment bags used at government and commercial radioactive waste cleanup sites, filed its lawsuit in June in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of […]

With funding for cleanup of the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex approaching a decade high, the agency must show what it can do with the extra cash, Energy Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar said Wednesday. The House and Senate this week unveiled a compromise version of their DOE-funding legislation for fiscal 2019, which would provide […]

The appropriations package agreed upon by a House-Senate conference committee this week makes it official: The Energy Department will not barter excess government uranium in fiscal 2019 to fund environmental remediation at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The multi-agency appropriations bill would provide $841 million for DOE’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, which pays […]

ICE Service Group on Monday denied patent infringement claims made in a lawsuit from a competitor, instead accusing the company of “brazen industrial espionage.” Louisiana-based PacTec, which makes industrial containment bags used at government and commercial radioactive waste cleanup sites, filed its lawsuit in June in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. […]

Safety precautions are already being implemented at the Savannah River Site, a Department of Energy facility near the Georgia-South Carolina border, as Hurricane Florence moves up the coast of Florida toward the Carolinas. For now, operations are running in a normal fashion, since Florence is expected to miss the 310-mile federal property near Aiken, S.C. […]

The management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is looking to hire nearly 70 engineers in an effort to keep up with demands as more of its workforce becomes eligible for retirement. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) currently has 84 external jobs posted online, ranging from engineer positions to business, […]

The Energy Department’s cleanup office will soon formally post openings for two leadership jobs, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing last week. The Office of Environmental Management will launch the official government hiring process for its principal deputy assistant secretary post, often referred to as EM-2, […]

Scott Anderson has been promoted to president and general manager of the cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley. Anderson has been the No. 2 executive at the West Valley contractor for three years, serving as senior vice president and general manager. […]

A wildfire burned an estimated 3,000 acres of the Hanford Site in Washington state early Saturday morning. Mission Support Alliance, the Department of Energy contractor in charge of the Hanford Fire Department, said the blaze was discovered at 3:20 a.m. and was contained at 6:50 a.m. The fire burned across grass and brush in the […]

Contractor Mission Support Alliance has begun a $7.8 million improvement to the water-system infrastructure in the center of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Workers are installing about 4 miles of 30-inch pipe to connect the separate water grids of the east and west areas of the nuclear cleanup site. Work is […]

The Port Hope Area Initiative has completed transport of radioactively contaminated soil from the Center Pier in Port Hope, Ontario, to a nearby long-term holding facility. The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories radioactive contamination cleanup program last week tweeted before and after photos of the pier – the first showing the tarp that previously covered the soil […]

A federal judge has pushed out the date of the bench trial in the Hanford Site chemical vapors lawsuit until September 2019, about four years after the case was filed. Judge Thomas Rice, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington state, on Thursday granted a joint request from parties to the case to reschedule the […]

HENDERSON, Nev. – Parsons Senior Vice President Frank Sheppard Jr. expressed confidence Thursday the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina will start operation in 2019. “We are going to start up next year,” Sheppard said during a panel presentation on tank waste at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste […]

The waste storage tank farm manager at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), is seeking expressions of interest from subcontractors qualified to design and build a 10,000-square-foot modular laboratory facility by the end of 2019. The AECOM-led contractor published the prequalification/expression of interest (EOI) document Aug. 30 on […]

HENDERSON, Nev. — The head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office fears remediation efforts have reached a “plateau” and need a push to advance toward closure of remaining sites. Toward that, the office is developing strategic plans both for its full operations and for specific properties over the coming decade. “The analogy that comes […]

Some information of the well decommissioning program at the Hanford Site in Washington state has not been kept up-to-date, the Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released on Aug. 31. The audit was a follow-up to a January 2005 audit on well decommissioning activities, which found numerous problems. Every time […]

HENDERSON, Nev. — Department of Energy officials and industry executives expressed hope Wednesday that no last-minute snags hold up passage of a fiscal 2019 budget with healthy funding for the agency’s nuclear weapons and cleanup operations. “Who wants to do layoffs in an election year?” Eric Knox, vice president of strategic development, nuclear and environment, […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies said Wednesday it has promoted Heatherly H. Dukes to the position of president of the company’s Technical Services Group. Dukes has most recently served as the group’s chief operating officer, overseeing BWXT operations at more than a dozen Energy Department and NASA facilities with an annual contract value of about $7 […]

The Department of Energy must hold additional public hearings in the Pacific Northwest on a proposal that could lead to a limited amount of radioactive waste being grouted in place in the Hanford Site’s underground storage tanks, according to three members of Washington state’s congressional delegation. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, along with Rep. […]

Watchdog group Hanford Challenge is calling for an independent look at the threats that Hanford’s contamination may pose to nearby communities after a small, newly completed study reported radioactive contamination in the personal cars or trucks of three workers at the Energy Department site in Washington. The study said the cars had previously been checked […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies said Wednesday it has promoted Heatherly H. Dukes to the position of president of the company’s Technical Services Group. Dukes has most recently served as the group’s chief operating officer, overseeing BWXT operations at more than a dozen Energy Department and NASA facilities with an annual contract value of about $7 […]

Department of Energy officials and industry executives expressed hope Wednesday that no last-minute snags hold up passage of a fiscal 2019 Energy Department budget with healthy funding for its nuclear weapons and cleanup operations. “Who wants to do layoffs in an election year?” Eric Knox, vice president of strategic development, nuclear and environment, for the […]

The head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office fears remediation within the weapons complex has reached a “plateau” and needs a push to advance toward closure of many sites. Toward that, the office is developing strategic plans both for its full operations and for specific properties over the coming decade. “The analogy that comes […]

The waste storage tank farm manager at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), is seeking expressions of interest from subcontractors qualified to design and build a 10,000-square-foot modular laboratory facility by the end of 2019. The AECOM-led contractor published the prequalification/expression of interest (EOI) document Aug. 30 on the […]

  AVANTech, which works at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, has named a veteran of nuclear waste cleanup as its senior process engineer for the Hanford Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) Project. The Columbia, S.C.-based water treatment provider, a subcontractor to Hanford waste storage tank farm manager Washington River Protection Solutions, said […]

Some information of the well decommissioning program at the Hanford Site in Washington state has not been kept up-to-date, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released Friday. The audit was a follow-up to a January 2005 audit on well decommissioning activities, which found numerous problems. Wells are used at […]

The article “Draft RFP Issued for SRS Management Contract” (Weapons Complex Monitor, Vol. 29, No. 32) should have said the Department of Energy expects to issue a final solicitation for the Savannah River Site management contract in January 2019.

The failure of the second tunnel storing radioactive waste from the Hanford Site’s PUREX processing plant could be more severe than estimated a year ago, according to Department of Energy cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Dan Wood, chief operating officer for the contractor, said new findings of corrosion in the second tunnel raise […]

The Energy Department appears to have retained a firm to provide leadership training seminars this month for certain officials at the Office of Environmental Management, which coincides with an ongoing reorganization of the nuclear cleanup office. In an award notice posted Wednesday on www.fbo.gov,  DOE justified the noncompetitive contract awarded to Lake Arrowhead, Calif.-based Effectiveness […]