Cleanup & Remediation

Kenneth R. Tarcza, a retired Army officer, has been named manager of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office in Tennessee as of May 3. He will oversee the Integrated Support Center, which provides services to multiple national laboratories and Office of Science sites. The appointment was announced Monday by the DOE’s Office of Science. […]

Even at almost $4 billion, the Department of Energy underestimates the cost of cleaning up decades worth of accumulated defense nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), New Mexico’s Environment Department said Thursday. “DOE’s lifecycle baseline estimate is $3.8 billion, which we believe to be conservative,” a spokesperson for state Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn […]

A proposed bureaucracy shake-up that would have the nine field-office heads at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) reporting to a new Washington-based manager remained ongoing at press time Friday, a DOE spokesperson said this week. The proposed reorganization, which would be the second for EM since 2014, seeks to streamline the agency’s roughly […]

Fluor Idaho’s five-year, $1.4-billion contract to clean up the Department of Energy’s Idaho Site officially began Wednesday, with the now-former incumbents turning over the keys to the weapons complex’s largest backlog of transuranic waste. DOE announced in February that Fluor won the ICP Core contract, which combines cleanup work previously handled by CH2M-WG Idaho, a […]

Kenneth R. Tarcza, a retired Army officer, has been named manager of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office in Tennessee as of May 3. He will oversee the Integrated Support Center, which provides services to multiple national laboratories and Office of Science sites. The appointment was announced Monday by the DOE’s Office of Science. […]

Fluor Idaho’s five-year, $1.4-billion contract to clean up the Energy Department’s Idaho site officially began Wednesday, with the now-former incumbents turning over the keys to the weapons complex’s largest backlog of transuranic waste. DOE announced in February Fluor won the ICP Core contract, which combines cleanup work previously handled by CH2M-WG Idaho, a partnership between […]

The Energy Department wants to reshuffle the bureaucracy of its Environmental Management office to have its nine field offices report to a new central office, according to an official DOE proposal obtained by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. Currently, the directors of the nine field offices report directly to the office of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental […]

The Energy Department’s Inspector General on Tuesday started a review of actions taken by the agency to address worker concerns about chemical vapors at the Hanford tank farms near Richland, Wash. The DOE IG held an entrance conference with Hanford officials to discuss the scope of the review and related matters, according to a memo […]

The public comment period closed Tuesday evening on an expansive new set of rules governing federal cleanup of legacy defense nuclear waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The draft revised consent order between the Energy Department and the state of New Mexico would amend a 2005 agreement that remains in force until DOE and […]

A regional economic development group representing rural South Carolina counties that house DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS) may not join the state’s $100 million dollar plutonium lawsuit against the Energy Department, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The Southern Carolina Regional Development Alliance filed its motion to intervene in March, a month after the state filed […]

The Energy Department’s Environmental Management office quietly launched its own Facebook page May 25. The official U.S. steward of legacy defense-nuclear waste cleanup will use the page to help the public “keep up to date with EM’s progress across the complex,” the agency said in a Wednesday press release. The Environmental Management office will use […]

For the third time in four years, the Energy Department has delayed the start-date for treating almost 1 million gallons of liquid waste at its Idaho site, the agency announced late Friday. In a press release that hit the wire around 3 p.m. Eastern time, DOE said it “notified the State of Idaho that it […]

A massive cleanup contract that would begin Oct. 1, 2017 at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) includes five years, plus a pair of options that would stretch the deal out through 2027, according to a draft solicitation DOE released late Thursday. The final value of the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract will […]

A new mobile laboratory may help Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) better protect Hanford workers from exposure to chemical vapors at the tank farms. This spring, about 50 workers at the Energy Department’s Hanford site near Richland, Wash., received medical evaluations for possible exposure to chemical vapors. All are being released to return to work. […]

Nuclear waste management company Perma-Fix, Atlanta, appointed nuclear cleanup veteran Mark Duff executive vice president, the company announced Friday. “We are pleased to have an executive of Mark’s caliber join us at this exciting time in our company,” Louis Centofanti, Perma-Fix president and chief executive, said in a press release. “We look forward to his involvement as part […]

For the third time in four years, the Energy Department has delayed the start-date for treating almost 1 million gallons of liquid waste at its Idaho site, the agency announced late Friday. In a press release that hit the wire around 3 p.m. Eastern time, DOE said it “notified the State of Idaho that it […]

The Department of Energy may miss the Sept. 30 deadline to tear down the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., an agency spokesperson said late Thursday, and a new schedule is still in the works. “DOE is in discussions with regulators on a potential change to the milestone for completing […]

Industry will get its first look at the draft solicitation for a long-term, $1 billion-plus contract for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from June 7-9, when the Department of Energy plans to host potential bidders for a tour of the 70 year-old nuclear-weapons research and development facility, along with one-on-one talks with […]

NV5 Global said Wednesday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Dade Moeller and Associates, headquartered near the Hanford Site in Washington state. The deal is expected to become final today. Dade Moeller, founded in Richland in 1994, has held Hanford contracts since then and currently has employees working on many of Hanford’s major […]

Six weeks after introducing a draft revised consent order that will govern future hazardous waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn returned to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board (NNMCAB) on Wednesday to sound out some new ideas. While announcing he was extending the public comment period […]

URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, continues to accelerate the demolition of the K-27 uranium-enrichment facility – the last of the five gaseous diffusion plants at the site now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park – and the progress is allowing the contractor to push ahead with […]

Susan Beard, the White House’s nominee for Department of Energy inspector general, on Wednesday was still drafting a list of actions she would take to improve safety and whistleblower culture at the agency’s Hanford Site, as requested by a senator on the committee that is the first gatekeeper in her confirmation process. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), whose […]

Industry will get its first look at the draft solicitation for a long-term, $1 billion-plus contract for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from June 7-9, when the Department of Energy plans to host potential bidders for a tour of the 70 year-old nuclear-weapons research and development, along with one-on-one talks with DOE […]

About a year after the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) stood up a field office at the 70-year-old nuclear-weapons lab, the agency has launched a dedicated website for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. The Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) website is located here, and […]

Sigma Science Inc., of Los Alamos, will write a handbook for dealing with the full scope of safety threats at the highly contaminated Area G waste facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) under a two-year, $3.1 million task order announced Monday by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. The task order requires the company […]

Another possible chemical vapor incident was reported Tuesday at the Hanford Site in Washington state for the first time in five days. This one was different because it was reported about 7 miles away from where previous reports were made. Previous potential exposures in recent weeks were in or near the group of tank farms […]

The Senate on Thursday at last united to pass a fiscal 2017 spending bill with $31 billion for the Department of Energy, but the House cannot even begin floor votes on its own backlog of spending bills until Monday because Congress still has not agreed on overall spending levels for the next budget year. It […]

Making good on a threat from January, a Santa Fe, N.M., nuclear watchdog group on Thursday sued the Energy Department and the agency’s prime contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in federal court for failing to clean up nuclear waste at the 70 year-old weapons lab. Nuclear Watch New Mexico filed suit in the […]