Cleanup & Remediation

Only days after news of his departure from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management leaked, Mark Whitney, the agency’s No. 2 nuclear-cleanup official, has joined AECOM, the Los Angeles-based DOE contractor announced. Whitney “has been appointed chief operating officer of AECOM’s nuclear and environment strategic business unit,” AECOM wrote in the press release. The company […]

Under the continuing resolution President Barack Obama signed Thursday after weeks of congressional bickering totally unrelated to nuclear programs, the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear-cleanup office is now funded at a slightly higher level than the White House requested for fiscal 2017. With the season’s only must-pass bill out of the way, Congress now adjourns until […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site said Friday it has begun downblending 6 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The milestone follows DOE’s announcement on April 5 that it would downblend the material and send it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for disposal. The process of blending plutonium oxide with an […]

The state of Idaho will fine the Energy Department up to $3,600 daily after today, when as of the stroke of midnight DOE will officially have blown a deadline to start treating almost 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. This waste was to be processed by the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU): a so-called steam reformer […]

Mark Whitney, the Energy Department’s No. 2  nuclear-cleanup official, is leaving the agency for a private sector gig, his boss wrote in an internal memo that leaked Tuesday. “It is with gratitude for his service that I share with you the news that Mark Whitney is leaving DOE to pursue an opportunity in the private sector,” […]

A U.S. District Court judge will hear arguments next month on whether to dismiss the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleging Fluor Federal Services and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) overcharged the government by more than $5 million for home office expenses and other “unallowable costs” in operation of the Savannah River Site. The federal […]

The city of Santa Fe, N.M., on Sept. 16 made public a Department of Energy report that says it will take about 20 years and cost up to $4 billion for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to clean up some 5,000 cubic meters of Cold War-era nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). It […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With its budget for legacy nuclear cleanup squeezed, the Energy Department thinks remediation projects across the country could benefit from a change in strategy similar to what was laid out this summer in an expansive new framework approved for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, senior agency officials said last week at a […]

A new Energy Department assessment of waste disposal practices at the Savannah River Site concluded that radiation doses are being maintained within appropriate limits and should not pose threats to the public or facility personnel. The Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) conducted the evaluation in February and March and released its findings this […]

An article in the Sept. 16 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor should have said the Department of Energy is overseeing the downblending of 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium at Savannah River Site, which is scheduled to begin this month.

Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) has been ordered to pay $216,080 in back pay and compensation to two whistleblowers it removed from the job in 2012. The computer specialist employees had raised issues with a new electronic medical system when CSC held the Hanford Site occupational medicine contract. In 2014 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration […]

A new Energy Department assessment of waste disposal practices at the Savannah River Site concluded that radiation doses are being maintained within appropriate limits and should not pose threats to the public or facility personnel. The Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) conducted the evaluation in February and March and released its findings this […]

A U.S. District Court judge will hear arguments next month on whether to dismiss the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleging Fluor Federal Services and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) overcharged the federal government by more than $5 million for home office expenses and other “unallowable costs” in operation of the Savannah River Site. The […]

Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) has been ordered to pay $216,080 in back pay and compensation to two whistleblowers it removed from the job in 2012. The computer specialist employees had raised issues with a new electronic medical system when CSC held the Hanford Site occupational medicine contract. In 2014 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration […]

The city of Santa Fe, N.M., on Friday made public a Department of Energy report that says it will take about 20 years and cost up to $4 billion for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to clean up some 5,000 cubic meters of Cold War-era nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It is the first time […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With its budget for legacy nuclear cleanup squeezed, the Energy Department thinks remediation projects across the country could benefit from a change in strategy similar to what was laid out this summer in an expansive new framework approved for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, senior agency officials said last week at a major […]

The Washington state Attorney General’s Office this week forcefully challenged the federal government’s request that a U.S. District Court dismiss the state lawsuit filed over worker safety at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In a motion filed in August, the Department of Justice said the state had no legal standing under the 1976 Resource […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has settled a discrimination lawsuit filed against the contractor by a former employee who alleged she was denied a better job opportunity because she was Hispanic and the person who got the job was white. However, terms of the settlement were not released. Victoria Brandner sued SRNS, the Savannah River […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With her customary caution and courtesy, the Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official would neither confirm nor deny that her career at the agency would end when President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Asked here at the 2016 National Cleanup Workshop whether she would consider staying at DOE’s Office of […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department will award hundreds of millions of dollars of work for continued operation of depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion (DUF6) plants at the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio later this month, a senior DOE procurement official said here Wednesday. “Somebody asked me yesterday if we’re going […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has settled a discrimination lawsuit filed against the contractor by a former employee who alleged she was denied a better job opportunity because she was Hispanic and the person who got the job was white. However, terms of the settlement were not released. Victoria Brandner sued SRNS, the Savannah River […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department will award hundreds of millions of dollars of work for continued operation of depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion (DUF6) plants at the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio later this month, a senior DOE procurement official said here Wednesday. “Somebody asked me yesterday if we’re going […]

The Washington state Attorney General’s Office this week forcefully challenged the federal government’s request that a U.S. District Court dismiss the state lawsuit filed over worker safety at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In a motion filed in August, the Department of Justice said the state has no legal standing to filer the September 2015 lawsuit […]

An article in the Sept. 11 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing should have said that the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management has management and operations contracts in place at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With her customary caution and courtesy, the Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official would neither confirm nor deny that her career at the agency would end when President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Asked here at the 2016 National Cleanup Workshop whether she would consider staying at DOE’s Office of […]

Contractor executives and government officials from the Energy Department’s major nuclear cleanup sites descend on Washington, D.C., this week for meetings public and private, as Congress begins work on a short-term spending deal to keep the federal government open beyond Sept. 30. The action begins today in Alexandria, Va., with the 2016 National Cleanup Workshop: […]

An article in the Sept. 8 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing incorrectly stated that Exelon is a potentially responsible party at the West Lake Landfill. The article also incorrectly stated that B&K Construction illegally dumped materials at the site.

The U.S. Department of Justice and Fluor Federal Services are at odds on whether a federal court should throw out a lawsuit that alleges Fluor and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) overcharged the federal government more than $5 million for home office expenses and other “unallowable costs” in operation of the Savannah River Site, according […]

The U.S. Department of Justice and Fluor Federal Services are at odds on whether a federal court should throw out a lawsuit that alleges Fluor and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) overcharged the federal government more than $5 million for home office expenses and other “unallowable costs” in operation of the Savannah River Site, according […]

With the federal appropriations process up in the air, Ohio’s Senate delegation has asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to make sure there is enough funding in the rapidly approaching 2017 fiscal year to continue planned cleanup of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. “As the fiscal year ends, it does not appear that Congress […]