Cleanup & Remediation

The Environmental Protection Agency could clear the Energy Department to keep disposing of transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant by mid-July, according to a recent regulatory filing. Every five years, under the federal law that created the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EPA must recertify that DOE is complying with the environmental laws governing […]

As of today, the Energy Department and Washington River Protection Solutions have one more week to let the state of Washington know if they can safely inspect the inside of the leaky double-shell tank they just emptied at the Hanford Site. On Feb. 15, DOE tank farms contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) told the […]

South Carolina and the federal government are conducting discussions toward settling a lawsuit in which the state has alleged that the government breached an agreement by not processing plutonium through the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in February 2016 sued the Energy Department, then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, […]

Eight members of Ohio’s delegation to the House of Representatives on Monday urged new Energy Secretary Rick Perry  to visit the department’s uranium enrichment decommissioning project at Portsmouth. This is the latest of several invitations Perry has received from lawmakers to take an up close and personal view of DOE’s cleanup of its Cold War nuclear complex. […]

Demolition has resumed on the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant, more than a month after a radiation spread was discovered on Jan. 27. In another key step forward toward demolishing the Department of Energy plant, external power was shut off on March 5. “It’s the first time in 60 years that the PFP Facility has […]

The Energy Department could soon revise an Obama administration decision that bartering government-owned uranium to pay for nuclear cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, does not harm the domestic uranium market, a March 9 regulatory filing shows. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is beginning the process to consider a new Secretarial Determination covering potential […]

PHOENIX — The first three sites to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will be privately operated Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas, and the Department of Energy’s Idaho and Savannah River sites, a senior DOE official said here Monday. The department has not yet decided which of those […]

Idaho officials are open to the idea of lengthening the lifespan of the Energy Department’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project past 2018, but DOE has yet to release a report detailing what such an extension might look like. The facility, which employs about 700 workers, was built more than 15 years ago to treat and […]

The U.S. senators from Washington state are calling on the Department of Energy’s inspector general to assess the safety environment at the Hanford, including investigating its third-party administrator for workers’ compensation claims. The request comes after DOE notified the administrator, Penser North America, that it would end its contract without exercising all options for extensions. […]

  Hanford Site workers next week will switch to some highly limited use of air purifying respirators in place of supplied air respirators at the Department of Energy facility’s waste storage tank farms. A joint statement Thursday informed workers that starting March 14 some entries into the AP Tank Farm would involve use of air-purified […]

Fluor’s chief operating officer is retiring at the end of this month, followed by the company’s chief financial officer before the year is over, the Texas-based Department of Energy contractor announced Wednesday. COO Peter Oosterveer has been with Fluor for 28 years in a number of positions, including as head of the company’s energy and chemicals […]

The Washington state House of Representatives last week voted 69-29 in favor of legislation that would make Hanford Site personnel more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation, but not before making a significant change to the bill. The state Senate now has its turn to consider Substitute House Bill 1723. The bill, modeled after a […]

PHOENIX — A facility needed to treat low-activity liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state will not be built until 2021 — the year before contractor Bechtel National must either prove its Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is ready to treat low-activity waste, or forfeit more than $150 million in fees, according to […]

Three Democratic Senators on Monday asked newly minted Energy Secretary Rick Perry to instate new whistleblower protections at the agency that the Trump administration delayed as part of a government-wide regulatory freeze. The whistleblower protection was part of a rule published in the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration that clarified DOE may assess civil penalties against contractors that […]

Yearly operating profit at CH2M’s Environment and Nuclear business rose 7 percent year over year to $83 million in an otherwise-tough 2016, the Englewood, Colo.-based engineering company reported this week. Gross revenue in the segment, which includes the company’s Cold War cleanup work with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, was just over $2 billion: up […]

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting U.S. nuclear cleanup during the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lauded CB&I AREVA MOX Services, which is building the embattled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, for its construction program and oversight in an assessment of the contractor’s construction activities and safety performance during 2016. The regulatory body said in a March 2 letter to CB&I AREVA MOX Services that the […]

The U.S. senators from Washington state are calling on the Department of Energy’s inspector general to assess the safety environment at the Hanford Site, including investigating its third-party administrator for workers’ compensation claims. The request comes after DOE notified the administrator, Penser North America, that it would end its contract without exercising all options for […]

PHOENIX — John “Rick” Dearholt, a former Jacobs Engineering hand who has worked on uranium enrichment complex demolition at the Oak Ridge Site, could soon become the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for environmental management. Reached by phone late Wednesday, Dearholt confirmed one of the biggest rumors circulating at the annual Waste Management Symposium here: that […]

Fluor’s chief operating officer is retiring at the end of this month, followed by the company’s chief financial officer before the year is over, the Texas-based Department of Energy contractor announced Wednesday. COO Peter Oosterveer has been with Fluor for 28 years in a number of positions, including as head of the company’s energy and chemicals […]

PHOENIX — A facility needed to treat low-activity liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state will not be built until 2021 — the year before contractor Bechtel National must either prove its Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is ready to treat low-activity waste, or forfeit more than $150 million in fees, according to […]

PHOENIX — Waste Control Specialists and the Department of Energy are negotiating an extension of the contract for the company’s continued storage of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a WCS executive said Tuesday. The current contract expires on March 31. WCS’ Andrews County, Texas, waste storage facility has held more […]

PHOENIX — With a wireless networking infrastructure one contractor called “young,” dealing with the torrents of data generated by monitoring the Hanford Site’s millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste can be challenging. “For those of you that have just tried to put a router in your house and make it work with your multiple […]

The Savannah River Site received additional time Monday for storage of transuranic (TRU) waste containers outside of regulated areas so the facility can better prepare to resume shipments of the material to the newly reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The Department of Energy site requested, from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control […]

PHOENIX — The Los Alamos National Laboratory expects next month to begin treating 60 drums that contain a combustible mix of nitrate salts and kitty litter like that one that blew open and released a small amount of radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014, officials said here Monday. The incident closed the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lauded CB&I AREVA MOX Services, which is building the embattled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, for its construction program and oversight in an assessment of the contractor’s construction activities and safety performance during 2016. The regulatory body said in a March 2 letter to CB&I AREVA MOX Services that the […]

PHOENIX — The first three sites to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will be privately operated Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas; the Idaho National Laboratory, and the Savannah River National Laboratory, a senior DOE official said here Monday. DOE has not yet decided which of those […]

PHOENIX — Top officials in the Energy Department’s cleanup program of its Cold War nuclear complex are angling for a piece of the infrastructure spending spree promised by President Donald Trump, but the agency’s acting Environmental Management boss has yet to receive any formal direction from the new administration about which DOE programs, if any, qualify for such […]

The Washington state House of Representatives last week voted 69-29 in favor of legislation that would make Hanford Site personnel more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation, but not before making a significant change to the bill. The state Senate now has its turn with Substitute House Bill 1723. The bill, modeled after a state […]

Department of Energy cleanup contractor CH2M is scheduled to discuss its fourth-quarter 2016 results with investors at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday. The company also signaled the upcoming filings of its 10-K and 8-K forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is in the midst of a restructuring that is expected to involve moving […]