Cleanup & Remediation

Portage Inc. on Tuesday laid off 31 employees at the Energy Department’s Moab site in Utah, where the company recently received a follow-on contract for uranium tailings cleanup work, a local public radio station reported. The layoffs leaves 80 people on the job at Moab, the station, KUER 90.1, reported. A Portage spokesperson Wednesday declined to either confirm […]

The public will have its chance Thursday at the Los Alamos City Council chambers to question New Mexico officials about changes the state has proposed to the federally run nuclear-waste cleanup program at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the state Environment Department announced late Wednesday. The Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste Bureau has scheduled the open house beginning at […]

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) made a plea on the Senate floor Tuesday to increase the fiscal 2017 budget for a waste-disposal facility under construction at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio. As part of a $37.5 billion 2017 energy and water spending bill that includes almost $31 billion for DOE overall and just over […]

The lead parent company for Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor, participated last week in a pre-solicitation event attended by parties interested in taking over that work once the current deal expires in June 2017. “AECOM is extremely interested in continuing our success in cleaning up SRS, specifically within the […]

Hanford Site officials are investigating the possibility that a second double-shell tank at the Department of Energy facility may have a leak between its shells after unexpected radiation readings from the ventilation system of Tank AY-101’s annulus. However, results of a video inspection conducted in response to the readings showed no difference in the appearance […]

Washington River Protection Solutions workers were able to retrieve another 5,500 gallons of waste from Hanford Tank AY-102 over the weekend, although they had to also pump out waste between its shells several times. WRPS was making good progress in retrieving 151,000 gallons of sludge from the tank because it had a fairly slow leak […]

While nothing is certain in Congress, particularly in an election year, both houses have moved relatively swiftly during the current appropriations process. For the Energy Department, the House got things moving April 12, when its Appropriations energy and water subcommittee marked up a first draft of the fiscal 2017 spending legislation covering DOE. Since then, both the […]

The Senate’s proposal to pile more funding into the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site cleanup program has set the stage for a parochial tug-of-war over the agency’s fiscal 2017 legacy waste-cleanup budget, once House and Senate lawmakers gather to reconcile the differing spending bills they produced this month. The Senate’s proposed increase is for DOE’s Richland […]

Editor’s Note: DOE sub-agencies with excess facilities are required to maintain those facilities until the Environmental Management office assumes responsibility for them. An earlier version of this story said those sub-agencies were not required to pay for this maintenance. A Department of Energy report that will determine which of the agency’s excess nuclear facilities get torn down first […]

One of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s top concerns in the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex is the potential for a thermal runaway incident in Area G, the hazardous waste storage area at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. Although the risk may be somewhat mitigated by recent measures taken […]

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday erased the $16.5 million sought for Savannah River Site infrastructure upgrades that was included in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget request. The committee approved the bill after the Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved its version of the energy and water spending bill, which sustained SRS infrastructure funding […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth marked a major cleanup milestone at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, taking out the final component of radio-contaminated process gas equipment from the X-326 facility, DOE said Wednesday. Fluor removed the last of more than 7,000 components on March 21, DOE said in a press release. Getting the […]

K-27, the last of five gaseous diffusion plants to be demolished at the government’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., complex, appears to be coming down quicker than any of its predecessors (K-25, K-29, K-31, and K-33). That may be due to lessons learned from earlier demolitions, an increasingly experienced workforce, and/or an unusual period of mild winter […]

Retrieval of waste from the Hanford Site’s oldest double-shell tank resumed Thursday after workers gained some control over the internal leak in the container. As waste was being retrieved from Tank AY-102 early Sunday morning an alarm sounded, indicating the rate of leakage within the tank had increased dramatically. The decades-old tank was being emptied […]

The House Energy and Water Appropriations Bill for fiscal 2017 calls on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “proceed expeditiously” with a record of decision at the former Sylvania nuclear fuel site in Hicksville, N.Y., where residents have been awaiting cleanup. A record of decision is a public document that outlines cleanup options for […]

The Energy Department announced Thursday it has awarded a five-year, $153.8 million follow-on task order to Portage Inc. to relocate waste from the agency’s Moab Site in Moab, Utah, to a disposal facility near Crescent Junction, Utah. Under the task order, issued under DOE’s Office of Environmental Management nationwide indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, multiple award contract, […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth marked a major cleanup milestone at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, taking out the final component of radio-contaminated process gas equipment from the X-326 facility, DOE said Wednesday. Fluor removed the last of more than 7,000 components on March 21, DOE said in a press release. Getting the […]

The House Appropriations Committee late Tuesday afternoon brought Congress one step closer to a bicameral confrontation over whether to keep the mostly abandoned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal facility in Nevada on life support, and how strongly to protect the Mixed-Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility now under construction at Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site […]

The level of radioactive waste in the space between the shells of Hanford Site double-shell Tank AY-102 remained stable Tuesday as Washington River Protection Solutions continued to prepare to pump the waste back into the tank. As waste was being retrieved from the tank Sunday the space between the shells, called the annulus, filled with […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2017 energy and water spending proposal would provide more money than requested for the Department of Energy’s Hanford, Idaho, and Savannah River sites, plus additional funds for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., according to a bill report released Monday. All told, the House bill would provide $6.15 billion […]

A major leak of radioactive waste from the inner shell of Hanford Site double-shell Tank AY-102 into the space between the shells was detected this weekend as sludge was being retrieved from the tank. An alarm for a level detector in the space between the shells, called the annulus, sounded early Sunday morning. Retrieval work […]

The second melter at the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) Defense Waste Processing Facility has now processed twice as much radioactive waste as the plant’s now-retired first melter, according to a press release issued Monday. The facility just over two decades ago began converting high-level radioactive waste stored at the Department of Energy facility in South […]

The House Energy and Water Appropriations Bill calls on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “proceed expeditiously” with a record of decision at the former Sylvania nuclear fuel site in Hicksville, N.Y., where residents have been awaiting cleanup. A record of decision is a public document that outlines cleanup options for a location. That’s […]

The Department of Energy said Thursday it has awarded universities in Kentucky and Ohio a total of $5 million for research and outreach work for two key DOE Office of Environmental Management cleanup sites. Ohio University received a five-year, $2.5 million grant to provide public outreach and information about cleanup of the former uranium enrichment plant […]

Senate appropriators on Thursday passed their fiscal 2017 energy and water spending bill, including funding for the controversial mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. But they have asked the Senate Armed Services Committee to hold a hearing about the MOX approach that President Barack Obama nixed in his latest […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on Monday officially exited a reduced work phase, or deliberate operations, that was implemented after the company wrapped up an operational safety pause last fall. Now, the Savannah River Site management and operations contractor is fully in enhanced operations. Work in enhanced operations is closer to normal operations, but contingencies […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration and its Y-12 site contractor, Consolidated Nuclear Security, are moving forward with infrastructure improvements at two key facilities at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., facility. This is apparently one of the top priorities at Y-12, needed to support efforts to ensure the scaled-back plans for the Uranium Processing Facility keep the […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on Monday officially exited a reduced work phase, or deliberate operations, that was implemented after the company wrapped up an operational safety pause last fall. Now, the Savannah River Site management and operations contractor is fully in enhanced operations. Work in enhanced operations is closer to normal operations, but contingencies […]

House and Senate spending bills produced this week would provide more money for legacy nuclear waste cleanup in fiscal 2017 than the White House requested, but quash administration proposals to dispose of weapon-grade plutonium in New Mexico and change the way the Department of Energy funds cleanup of former uranium enrichment sites. DOE’s Office of […]

Spending bills unveiled this week unambiguously torpedoed the White House’s plan to pay for cleanup of former uranium enrichment facilities with new mandatory spending and new fees on commercial nuclear power. The House and Senate proposals differ on how much to spend on these activities in fiscal 2017, but both chambers agreed the White House’s […]