Cleanup & Remediation

CH2M has paid almost $471,000 to the Department of Energy as part of a March 2013 agreement to settle civil and criminal allegations of time card fraud at the Hanford Site in Washington state. DOE may only spend the money on systems at Hanford that would detect or deter time card fraud and abuse. CH2M […]

The Savannah River Site’s possible receipt of 900 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany will be discussed Monday and Tuesday by the site’s Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). The board’s Nuclear Materials Committee earlier this month approved a position paper that states the CAB does not want the material to come to SRS for fear […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has begun a process to restrict its airspace in response to the recent sightings of drones flying overhead. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, site officials won’t discuss further details, such as the individual steps in the process to restrict the airspace. In a note sent to […]

Two decades after the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF) opened at the Hanford Site, it has racked up impressive numbers, said Scott Sax, president of Washington Closure Hanford, on Wednesday as officials and workers gathered to mark the anniversary. Almost 18 million tons of waste material have been disposed of at the landfill for mixed […]

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and three universities have been named new Energy Frontier Research Centers for radiochemistry research to support the Department of Energy’s cleanup program. The DOE Office of Science plans to award $40 million over four years to the national lab in Washington state and Florida State University, Ohio State University, and […]

Plans were announced this week to file a federal class action lawsuit against the Department of Energy to recover retirement benefits lost for hundreds of Hanford employees who were moved to Lockheed Martin Services as part of a largely failed economic development plan in 1996. Fluor took over as the primary contractor at Hanford that […]

Officials from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health plan to visit the Hanford Site from July 25 to 28 for an evaluation announced last month related to worker exposure to chemical vapors. This week workers at the Hanford tank farms received a memo from NIOSH, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and […]

The state of Washington stepped up a lawsuit against the Energy Department and the prime contractor for the Hanford Site tank farm over worker exposure to chemical vapors by asking a federal judge Thursday to mandate protective gear and other safety measures around waste storage at the Department of Energy facility near Richland, Wash. Washington Attorney […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has begun a process to restrict its airspace in response to the recent sightings of drones flying overhead. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, site officials won’t discuss further details, such as the individual steps in the process to restrict the airspace. In a note sent to […]

The Energy Department said Thursday it completed the reorganization of its Environmental Management (EM) bureaucracy this week, consolidating seven organizational stovepipes into three and bringing the office’s nine field centers under the management of new Washington-based field office czar Stacy Charboneau. Charboneau take the new position of associate principal deputy assistant secretary for the Field Office unit within […]

Nuclear Watch New Mexico wants a federal judge to throw out the newly amended consent order governing cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a Tuesday court filing. In an amended complaint to a lawsuit originally filed in May, NukeWatch asked U.S. District Court Judge Judith Herrera to dismiss […]

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and three universities have been named new Energy Frontier Research Centers for radiochemistry research to support the Department of Energy’s cleanup program. The DOE Office of Science plans to award $40 million over four years to the national lab in Washington state and Florida State University, Ohio State University, and […]

Officials from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health plan to visit the Hanford Site from July 25 to 28 for an evaluation announced last month related to worker exposure to chemical vapors. This week workers at the Hanford tank farms received a memo from NIOSH, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and […]

Nuclear Watch New Mexico wants a federal judge to throw out the newly amended consent order governing cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a Tuesday court filing. In an amended complaint to a lawsuit originally filed in May, NukeWatch asked Judge Judith Herrera to dismiss the consent order between DOE […]

Court papers filed Friday show Nuclear Watch New Mexico will amend its lawsuit over nuclear waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Spokespersons for NukeWatch, as the group is known, declined to comment about their amended complaint, but confirmed they will file it Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has begun a process to restrict its airspace in response to the recent sightings of drones flying overhead. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, site officials won’t discuss further details, such as the individual steps in the process to restrict the airspace. In a note sent to […]

The Department of Energy looked the other way for decades while its contractors on major nuclear cleanup projects illegally intimidated or fired employees who raised safety concerns, according to a report published Thursday by the Government Accountability Office. “DOE has infrequently used its enforcement authority to hold contractors accountable for unlawful retaliation, issuing two violation […]

Two workers were given medical exams Tuesday for possible exposure to chemical vapors despite a stop work order issued Monday by the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC), a union umbrella group. The order stopped all work in Hanford Site tank farms unless workers are using mandatory supplied air respirators. HAMTC directed two groups of […]

Nuclear waste management technology provider Kurion on Monday announced the hiring of a vitrification and spent fuel reprocessing specialist as the company’s new technical director. Jean-Christophe Piroux comes to Kurion from AREVA, where he served as chief technical officer for back-end international operations. His more than 32-year career has taken him to France, Japan, Ukraine, […]

The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) called a halt to all work at the Hanford Site tank farms Monday without mandatory use of a supplied air respirator to protect workers from chemical vapors. “The Council hereby provides official notification that a standing stop work order is now in full force and effect until such […]

The Energy Department and its contractors are discussing amongst themselves different approaches to a series of safety procedures for treating the problematic stream of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that caused the 2014 radiation leak at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. According to a June 10 site weekly […]

The Savannah River Site’s security contractor, Centerra-SRS, earned $2.81 million out of a possible $2.96 million award fee for the first half of fiscal 2016. The money equates to a 95 percent performance during the time frame spanning from October 2015 through March 2016. The Department of Energy awards contractors based on how well they perform […]

Two former employees of Department of Energy contractors will join three Democratic senators on Thursday in Washington, D.C., to unveil a new government report on whistleblower retaliation at DOE nuclear cleanup sites, the lawmakers said late Friday in a joint press release. The lawmakers and erstwhile DOE site workers — identified in the release as […]

The Department of Energy has provided Washington state with a proposed plan requiring up to seven years of work to close the Hanford Site’s 324 Building, which sits above a highly radioactive spill. The plan was required to meet a Tri-Party Agreement milestone at the end of June to include the building in the Hanford […]

The downblending of 6 metric tons of plutonium at the Savannah River Site is expected to begin in September, with plans to complete the process over the next several years. The weapon-usable, non-pit plutonium is not part of the 34 metric tons of material that would be processed by the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility […]

Washington River Protection Solutions has offered to move work shifts in the Hanford Site tank farms to the Department of Energy facility’s Thursday-evening-through-Monday-morning weekend shifts or to night shifts in response to union demands. Fewer workers are on site during those hours to be exposed to possible chemical vapors. Mark Lindholm, president of the tank […]

As the Energy Department mulls how much of its legacy transuranic waste will have to be repackaged under the stricter new Waste Acceptance Criteria that went into effect at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) this week, the agency is quietly buying itself more time to deal with the problematic waste that caused the plant’s […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is seeking a dismissal of a federal lawsuit accusing the contractor and one of its parent companies of overcharging the government more than $5 million in “unallowable costs.” In papers filed on May 20, SRNS said the Department of Justice misused the Federal Claims Act in filing its lawsuit, and […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has cleaned up a small mercury and tritium spill at the Savannah River Site’s Solid Waste Management Facility and is preparing the waste for disposition, a spokesperson for the Energy Department’s contractor said Friday. The spill was discovered by SRNS personnel during a routine walk of the Solid Waste Management […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is seeking a dismissal of a federal lawsuit accusing the contractor and one of its parent companies of overcharging the government more than $5 million in “unallowable costs.” In papers filed on May 20, SRNS said the Department of Justice misused the Federal Claims Act in filing its lawsuit, and […]