Cleanup & Remediation

A federal judge has rescheduled the bench trial in the Hanford Site chemical vapors safety lawsuit for a ninth time. Judge Thomas Rice, of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, most recently pushed back the trial date from Nov. 26, 2018, to Feb. 5, 2019. Deadlines in the case also have been extended by about […]

None of the 21 drone sightings in 2016 at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina resulted in any significant findings, according to Department of Energy documents recently released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In some cases, what employees saw might not have even been a drone, the records indicate. In November 2016, […]

The watchdog organization Hanford Challenge said this week it found traces of radioactive americium in the engine filters of two employee vehicles that had been parked at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. The vehicles had previously been checked at Hanford and declared clean in the wake of a radioactive contamination spread from the plant […]

The U.S. Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) are accepting public comments through April 23 on environmental implications of the next phase of cleanup planned for the West Valley Demonstration Project (NVDP) in Ashford, N.Y. The state and federal agencies issued a notice of intent Wednesday in […]

Fluor is looking for additional business opportunities within the Energy Department’s Cold War cleanup complex, Chairman and CEO David Seaton said Tuesday. “We are looking at the Hanford liquid waste contract that is coming up for rebid this year,” Seaton said during a regular quarterly earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts. He did not […]

The U.S. Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) are accepting public comments through April 23 on environmental implications of the next phase of cleanup planned for the West Valley Demonstration Project (NVDP) in Ashford, N.Y. The state and federal agencies issued a notice of intent Wednesday in […]

Fluor is looking for additional business opportunities within the Energy Department’s Cold War cleanup complex, Chairman and CEO David Seaton said Tuesday. “We are looking at the Hanford liquid waste contract that is coming up for rebid this year,” Seaton said during a regular quarterly earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts. He did not […]

Fluor, one of the larger players in the U.S. Energy Department’s Cold War nuclear cleanup business, said Tuesday it took in $19.5 billion in revenue during 2017, a small step up from $19 billion recorded for 2016. Fluor said in a press release   it collected just over $5 billion in revenue for fourth-quarter 2017, an incremental […]

The watchdog organization Hanford Challenge says it found traces of radioactive americium in the engine filters of two employee vehicles that had been parked at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. The vehicles had previously been checked at Hanford and declared clean in the wake of a radioactive contamination spread from the plant demolition site, […]

The Department of Energy announced Monday that it has selected a new Savannah River Site manager to replace Jack Craig, is retiring after three years in the role and 32 years of federal service. Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Budney will take over at the 310-square-mile site near Aiken, S.C. While serving for nearly three […]

Leidos has acquired a larger share of Hanford Site contractor Mission Support Alliance to eliminate a conflict of interest for Jacobs Engineering Group. Leidos now owns 88 percent of the support services provider, with Centerra owning the remainder. When Jacobs Engineering Group completed its acquisition of CH2M in December, Jacobs became the partial owner of […]

The Trump administration’s nominee for assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, Anne Marie White, is taking private one-on-one meetings with senators prior to an expected hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, an industry source said Thursday. “She started her Senate rounds this week,” said the source, who said he did not know how […]

President Donald Trump’s defense-heavy budget request would have mixed effects at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. Trump has made no secret of his desire to increase military-related spending. Toward that, the White House proposal for fiscal 2019 would provide $15.1 million for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Energy’s stockpile steward, […]

The Energy Department expects in April to file a permit application for storage of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste at its Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) cleanup in upstate New York. A total of 22 containers are expected to hold waste generated by ongoing environmental remediation at the site, according to a recent DOE notice. […]

The number of workers with positive bioassay results has increased to seven since the spread of radioactive contamination was discovered in mid-December at the Hanford Site Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition zone. The seven workers are in addition to 31 workers discovered to have ingested or inhaled radioactive particles after a June spread of contamination during […]

Michael Budney will replace the retiring Jack Craig as manager of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Department of Energy announced Monday. Budney, a retired Navy captain, will be the top Department of Energy official at a site that employs about 11,000 civil servants and contractors and includes personnel from the agency’s National […]

The U.S. Department of Energy has as of Tuesday incurred $3.2 million in fines from the state of Idaho for failure to successfully start operating the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory. The facility is intended to process 900,000 gallons of liquid sodium-bearing waste produced during Cold War-era spent fuel reprocessing at […]

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is continuing to take aim at the Energy Department’s practice of bartering excess uranium for cleanup at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant in Ohio. Barrasso has cited uranium barter as the reason for his hold on Anne Marie White’s nomination for the position of assistant secretary of energy for environmental management. […]

The White House budget request for fiscal 2019, released Monday, would cut spending at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site by $230 million. The total budget would be $2.185 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The Office of River Protection (ORP) would receive $1.438 billion, which is $61 million below current spending for […]

Strata-G LLC is the recent winner of a $1 million contract from the U.S. Energy Department to conduct environmental sampling at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. Due to incorrect initial information from DOE, the original version of an article in the Feb. 6 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing listed the wrong company.

Leidos has acquired a larger share of Hanford Site contractor Mission Support Alliance to eliminate a conflict of interest for Jacobs Engineering Group. Leidos now owns 88 percent of the support services provider, with Centerra owning the remainder. When Jacobs Engineering Group completed its acquisition of CH2M in December, Jacobs became the partial owner of […]

Incumbent Navarro Research and Engineering was among a large crowd of firms registered with the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management for presolicitation meetings last month on the Nevada Environmental Services Program at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The registration document posted on the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center website included a four-page […]

A former Hanford Site building, now within the city limits of Richland, Wash., is being torn down under an $11.4 million contract held by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. The contract is separate from CH2M’s cleanup contract at Hanford for work such as excavating contaminated waste sites and tearing down contaminated buildings. The Richland building, […]

Jacobs Engineering Group reported $2 million in net earnings for its latest financial quarter, a steep year-over-year dive from $61 million linked to its recent acquisition of CH2M. Earnings for Jacobs’ fiscal 2018 first quarter ended Dec. 31, 2017, took a hit from the $3.27 billion CH2M acquisition and a one-time tax charge, the company […]

Department of Energy contractor AECOM on Tuesday reported $4.9 billion in revenue for the first quarter of its fiscal year, ended Dec. 31, 2017. That was 12.7 percent higher than the $4.35 billion recorded in the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2016. The Los Angeles-based global infrastructure company reported quarterly net income and diluted earnings per […]

The U.S. Department of Energy’s record of policing itself is “mixed at best,” and the agency might benefit from independent oversight by an entity such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said Tuesday. Pallone made his remarks during a House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee hearing on U.S. nuclear infrastructure. “For example, […]

The Department of Energy will remain frozen at fiscal 2017 spending levels through at least late March, under the stopgap spending bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on Friday morning after an overnight government shutdown — the second of fiscal 2018. The bill is the fifth continuing resolution of the fiscal […]

Workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state twice this week have reported smelling suspicious odors that could be chemical vapors. The two incidents are the first time since Nov. 28 that suspicious odors have been reported outside the radioactive waste storage tank farms at the Department of Energy facility. On Monday afternoon, five Hanford […]

The deputy director of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center has taken over as acting director. The vacancy newly filled on an interim basis by Jeffrey Kash Grimes was created by the December retirement of Ralph Holland following a 22-year management career at DOE. Holland had taken the reins at the EM […]

Strata-G LLC has won a $1 million contract from the Energy Department to conduct environmental sampling at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The sampling will support DOE plans for construction of an additional on-site disposal facility for hazardous and radioactive wastes at the Bear Creek Valley area of Oak Ridge, DOE said in a […]