Cleanup & Remediation

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) could be just days from awarding a new contract for legacy nuclear cleanup operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. A major procurements update from EM, dated Aug. 11, says the contract was due to be issued from June to August of this year. The […]

CH2M said this month it continues to wait on a ruling from the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals regarding a $40.1 million fee the company believes a former joint venture is owed for cleanup at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory. CH2M-WG Idaho (CWI) was the prime remediation provider at the facility from May 2005 to March 2016, succeeded by […]

The Energy Department wants until the end of fiscal 2025 to remove 1 metric ton of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to the latest filing in a state lawsuit on the matter. The eight-year time frame is significantly longer than the two years the state requested in another […]

Fluor Corp. has posted an online help-wanted advertisement connected to liquid waste management at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The company is not a member of the current liquid waste team at SRS, but is widely believed to have joined with Westinghouse Government Services to bid on the upcoming contract. The job […]

Workers with the Savannah River Site’s security contractor went on strike Tuesday, following failed negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). According to a press release from the Department of Energy, the CBA with Centerra-SRS expired in April. At that point, DOE and Centerra workers, who are members of the labor union United Professional Pro-Force […]

After five years, the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee has resumed shipping transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The waste is largely from research and isotope production operations previously carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, according to a press release from DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry made his first trip to the Hanford Site on Tuesday, touring facilities that will be used to treat radioactive waste left over from Cold War-era plutonium production. The former Texas governor walked through the Pretreatment Facility for the Waste Treatment Plant that Bechtel National is building to convert up to 56 […]

S&K Logistics Services will stay on as the technical assistance provider for the Department of Energy’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) project in Utah, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) announced last week. The Montana-based company won a five-year contract worth $20 million to $24.5 million, according to an Aug. 10 DOE EM […]

URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the managing contractor for cleanup of the East Tennessee Technology Park at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, is quickly moving forward on the teardown of the Poplar Creek facilities. The facilities are a network of 23 buildings constructed in the 1940s and 1950s to support uranium enrichment operations at […]

Atkins executive Alan Parker has voluntarily withdrawn his name from consideration as a candidate for the position of Energy Department assistant secretary for environmental management, industry sources said. Parker, president and project manager for the Atkins-led DOE contractor Mid-America Conversion Services, was reported in July to be on the White House’s list of potential nominees. […]

Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has acknowledged it will not meet upcoming contractual milestones for treatment of nitrate salts, according to a recently released site report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The Energy Department laboratory’s Waste Characterization, Reduction, and Repackaging Facility (WCRRF) is treating 60 containers of remediated […]

Department of Energy contractor North Wind Group is splitting management of its expanded eastern region of operations into northern and southern sectors. North Wind manager Brent Clark will take over as northeast region manager, covering Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, […]

The state of South Carolina has filed a new lawsuit against the Department of Energy seeking another $100 million it says the federal government owes for missing a deadline to remove 1 ton of plutonium from the Savannah River Site. The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. Court of Federal Claims, represents half of the total amount the […]

Plutonium and americium have been found in high-volume air samples collected June 8 by Washington state at the Hanford Site’s Rattlesnake Barricade. On June 8, Hanford personnel were ordered to take cover about 3 miles away at the Plutonium Finishing Plant after alarms for airborne contamination sounded during demolition of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility. […]

Scottish lawmaker Roseanna Cunningham on Sunday raised concerns about the state of environmental cleanup and personnel at the former Dounreay fast-reactor research and development site. “There continues to be cause for concern in Dounreay’s environmental performance, with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) having to take action. In addition, the recently published [Nuclear Decommissioning Authority] […]

A key piece of technology at the Department of Energy’s Idaho site has in 100,000 hours of operation compacted over 238,000 containers of transuranic waste. The “supercompactor” at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project compresses the 55-gallon drums into pucks just 5 to 7 inches thick, according to an Aug. 2 press release from site […]

French waste management company Veolia plans to acquire Ohio-based Wastren Advantage in a move that would further boost the Paris-based company’s reach into the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup market. “I can confirm we are in the process of being acquired by Veolia subject to the necessary approvals from DOE for our mitigated entity,” Wastren Chief […]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced July 27 that it had developed a nearly $40 million plan for cleanup of a radioactively contaminated site in Queen, N.Y. From about 1920 to 1954, the Wolff-Alport Chemical Co. retrieved rare earth minerals via processing of monazite sand, a process that produced radioactive waste that the company through 1947 dumped […]

Bad news about power plants, nuclear and otherwise, dominated discussion during Fluor Corp.’s second-quarter earnings call Thursday, shouldering out talk of the company’s work on clearnup of the Energy Deaprtment’s nuclear legacy. That latter work has gone well this year for the company, according to its latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Fluor […]

The ExchangeMonitor is following Congress into August recess, and Weapons Complex Monitor will not be published during the second and third weeks of the month. We’ll still be in the office, so keep the news tips coming, and look for the next weekly newsletter in your inbox on Friday, Aug. 25.  

The Department of Energy plans by the end of August to release a draft request for proposals to replace the contract now held by Mission Support Alliance for services at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The new Hanford mission essential services contractor would provide site services, security and emergency operations, land management, information technology […]

The Department of Energy said this week it wants to bring in a “best and brightest” panel of experts to study the second tunnel used to store radioactive waste from the Hanford Site’s PUREX plant. The federal agency told Washington state Tuesday that it would enhance surveillance and monitoring until it proposes a method for […]

Glyn Trenchard has been named assistant manager of the Hanford Site Tank Farms Project for the Department of Energy Office of River Protection. He will oversee the storage, treatment, and disposal of 56 million gallons of waste stored in underground tanks starting Aug. 6. Trenchard joined the Office of River Protection in 1998 and has […]

French waste management company Veolia plans to acquire Ohio-based Wastren Advantage in a move that would further boost the Paris-based company’s reach into the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup market. “I can confirm we are in the process of being acquired by Veolia subject to the necessary approvals from DOE for our mitigated entity,” Wastren Chief […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has invited Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration leadership to speak at a public hearing Sept. 13 on the status of emergency management across defense nuclear facilities. The hearing, to be held at the DNFSB’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, will allow DOE officials to make prepared remarks on the […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry postponed a visit this week to the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said. The meeting had not been rescheduled at deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor. “While I’m disappointed that Secretary Perry cannot make it to Piketon on Monday I’m pleased he has indicated that he […]

Tuesday was the 10th anniversary of the start of construction of the Energy Department’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina — an occasion unheralded by either the agency or its contractor while lawmakers again debate whether to cancel the facility. As part of an arms-control agreement with Russia, initiated in 2000 and finalized in 2010, […]

After four months of deliberations, the state of South Carolina and the Department of Energy could not agree on how best to remove plutonium from DOE’s Savannah River Site, or whether the department will pay $200 million in fines that have piled up while the dispute lingered. In a joint statement Monday to Judge J. Michelle Childs, […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is this week sending its eighth shipment of transuranic (TRU) waste in this fiscal year to the reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The shipment meets the projection managers at the South Carolina facility set forth earlier this year. Two shipments apiece were sent to […]

The Department of Energy is seeking additional time to evaluate options for stabilizing the second waste storage tunnel at the Hanford Site’s PUREX plant. It is proposing convening a “best and brightest” panel of experts to consider the tunnel design, operating history, and waste inventory, which would inform a decision on how to deal with […]