Cleanup & Remediation

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) toured the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site Friday and prodded Energy Secretary Rick Perry about the former Texas governor’s promise to visit the shuttered gaseous diffusion plant. Portman is a constant advocate for the ongoing cleanup at Portsmouth, which besides being bedeviled by the unknown-unknowns typical to legacy nuclear-cleanups managed by […]

James Voss will step down as managing director of Waste Management Symposia at the end of June. The organization helms the annual Waste Management Symposium, which is widely considered a must-attend show among nuclear-cleanup experts in industry and government. Voss broke the news late Tuesday in a widely distributed email. The text of that email […]

The Department of Energy is making plans to fill the partially collapsed waste tunnel at the Hanford PUREX plant with grout, the agency said in a Wednesday meeting with state regulators and site contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Company. Personnel at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., discovered a 20-foot-long breach in the Purex tunnel May […]

James Voss will step down as managing director of Waste Management Symposia at the end of June. The organization helms the annual Waste Management Symposium, which is widely considered a must-attend show among nuclear-cleanup experts in industry and government. Voss broke the news late Tuesday in a widely distributed email. The text of that email […]

James Voss will step down as managing director of Waste Management Symposia at the end of June. The organization helms the annual Waste Management Symposium, which is widely considered a must-attend show among nuclear-cleanup experts in industry and government. Voss broke the news late Tuesday in a widely distributed email. The text of that email […]

The manager in charge of the effort to fix a Savannah River Site evaporator pot that unexpectedly sprung a leak halfway through its 30-year design life is 95-percent sure the vessel will be up and running again by Dec. 31. The 3H Evaporator Pot, which last year leaked some 3,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, is […]

The Department of Energy’s latest budget request would reduce spending at the Hanford Site in Washington state by $118.8 from current levels. The total budget would be $2.22 billion for fiscal 2018, not including security costs. The proposal would add about $5 million to the budget of Hanford’s Office of River Protection, for a total […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is in line to receive $1.45 billion in fiscal 2018 for its environmental management (EM) mission, much of which would fund liquid waste cleanup, according to President Donald Trump’s budget proposal this week. The request is $111 million more than the South Carolina site received for EM work […]

Radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s double-shell Tank AZ-101 does not appear to be from a leak within the tank, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. A leak was considered possible when a robotic crawler pulled out of the annulus, or space between the tank’s two shells, on May 18 was found to be contaminated […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would receive $118 million in its upcoming budget for continued cleanup of former federal nuclear sites, under the fiscal 2018 funding proposal released Tuesday by the White House. The funding level for the Army Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) is the same as listed in a budget […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to review monitoring and maintenance of aging facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state after the May 9 discovery of a breached waste tunnel. “Fortunately, the collapse did not result in any injuries and no measureable release of […]

Savannah River Site security has been given direction to take appropriate action if a drone flying above the site presents a threat, an official at the South Carolina facility told a local advisory board on Monday. “Protocols are in place for engagement and I don’t really want to say anything else about that,” according to […]

The Department of Energy has rated the fiscal 2016 performance of Hanford Site support services provider Mission Support Alliance (MSA) as “very good.” The contractor earned 91 percent of the available fee, or a little more than $19.2 million. The fee included 94 percent of the maximum available for meeting milestones, or nearly $13 million, […]

The $88 million top-line increase the Donald Trump administration proposed Tuesday for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2018 is two-and-a-half times less than the office would spend next year to start decontaminating disused nuclear-weapon facilities now owned by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The administration’s new budget plan, if […]

The Energy Department said Thursday it has awarded Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership — a CH2M-led team that also includes Fluor Corp. and BWX Technologies — a contract worth about $1.5 billion over 10 years, including options, to deactivate and remediate the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Ky. DOE received four bids for the work, according […]

Radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s double-shell Tank AZ-101 does not appear to be from a leak within the tank, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. A leak was considered possible when a robotic crawler pulled out of the annulus, or space between the shells of the tank, on May 18 was found to be […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to review monitoring and maintenance of aging facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state after the May 9 discovery of a breached waste tunnel. “Fortunately, the collapse did not result in any injuries and no measureable release of […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would receive $118 million in its upcoming budget for continued cleanup of former federal nuclear sites, under the fiscal 2018 funding proposal released Tuesday by the White House. The funding level for the Army Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) is the same as listed in a budget […]

Members of Washington state’s congressional delegation used two recent emergencies at the Hanford Site to make the case for strong funding for the Department of Energy facility in a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. “It is clear aging infrastructure and the waste contained within it continues to present a threat to the health and […]

The Trump administration is proposing $118 million in funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) in fiscal 2018, according to a budget spreadsheet leaked last week. That would be $6 million more than provided in the omnibus appropriations bill President Donald Trump signed into law earlier this […]

Savannah River Remediation expects to save about $10 million by repairing, rather than replacing, a piece of equipment essential for chemical separations operations at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a company executive told a citizens group Monday. The equipment, a nearly 30-foot-high evaporator pot that last year leaked some 3,000 gallons […]

A heavy plastic cover was installed Saturday over the partially collapsed PUREX plant waste tunnel at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Work is expected to continue through Monday to secure the cover’s sides with 150 concrete ecology blocks and to crisscross cable lacings from the blocks across the top of the soil […]

Radioactive contamination discovered Thursday night could be a sign that a second double-shell tank at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is leaking waste into the space between its shells. A robotic crawler had been inserted down a riser into the space between the shells, or the annulus, of Tank AZ-101 as […]

The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals on May 12 dismissed an appeal filed by the management and operations contractor of the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site over a dispute on the allowability of certain contract costs. In 2013, a DOE contracting officer “disallowed” $1.3 million paid to Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) under the […]

Workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on Wednesday morning sent the first barrel of potentially explosive nitrate-salt waste to the building where it will be cleaned up and prepared for eventual disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a source in New Mexico said. Stephen Hoffman, deputy manager of the agency’s Environmental Management Los […]

A freight train operated by BNSF Railway and carrying debris from the demolition of the Energy Department’s Separations Research Process Unit in upstate New York derailed on May 13 near Bosworth, Mo., though no one was hurt and no waste was spilled. A spokesperson for AECOM, prime contractor on the demolition of the 1950s-era plutonium research facility […]

Hanford Site officials were hoping for little or no wind Friday to they can lay a plastic covering over the entire length of the PUREX plant underground waste tunnel where a breach was discovered on May 9. Weather permitting, workers will stage a heavy piece of industrial plastic beside the soil berm that tops the […]

It will take until 2031 to empty and seal 16 underground waste tanks at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. — 12 years later than the end-date DOE and Washington state set in 2010, the federal agency said late Monday in a regulatory filing. The 16 single-shell tanks to be emptied and closed are in Hanford’s […]

Five citizens groups on Wednesday sued the U.S. Interior Department over plans to build park infrastructure and services at the Energy Department’s former plutonium pit production site at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant in Colorado. The groups suing are: the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center; Candelas Glows/Rocky Flats Glows; Rocky Flats Right To Know; […]

Workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on Wednesday morning sent the first barrel of potentially explosive nitrate-salt waste to the building where it will be cleaned up and prepared for eventual disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a source in New Mexico said. Stephen Hoffman, deputy manager of the agency’s Environmental Management Los […]