Cleanup & Remediation

PHOENIX — Heavy equipment left over from a successful liquid-waste disposal operation at the West Valley Demonstration Project should be entombed in concrete in Texas by October, a DOE contractor said here Wednesday at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. Some 600,000 gallons of high-level liquid waste leftover from West Valley, the only U.S. site ever […]

PHOENIX — The public could get its first look at a new proposed consent agreement governing DOE cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) near Los Alamos, N.M. on March 30, a state official said here at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. “We’re targeting March 30 for the document to go up for […]

North Wind Services of Idaho Falls will start building the Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP) IX enclosure at the Energy Department’s Idaho Site under a one-year, $1.7 million letter contract DOE announced in a Tuesday press release. ARP is a program to build enclosures over buried waste at Pit 10 East in the subsurface disposal area […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management issued a one-year task order worth up to $2.8 million from its indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract with SUNSi JV, of Pocatello, Idaho, for expert consultation at the agency’s Separations Process Research Unit site in Niskayuna, N.Y. Under the task order, SUNSi JV will “provide the services of full-time […]

Department of Energy officials and contractors for the DOE Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office will discuss progress in the ongoing cleanup of the former gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky. The panel, “U.S. DOE Featured Site: Lexington, KY, Office (Portsmouth & Paducah Sites),” is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. to noon, in Room 102BC. The scheduled speakers […]

The Energy Department plans to release a draft solicitation for Savannah River liquid cleanup work worth between $1 billion and $3 billion by March 31, a senior DOE procurement official said Wednesday at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. By the end of the month, “I think you’ll have a draft on your hands,” Jack Surash, […]

Heavy equipment left over from a successful liquid-waste disposal operation at the West Valley Demonstration Project should be entombed in concrete in Texas by October, a DOE contractor said Wednesday at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. Some 600,000 gallons of high-level liquid waste leftover from West Valley, the only U.S. site ever to reprocess spent […]

The operator of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina intends by the end of March to fully resume normal operations following a September 2015 incident that led to the suspension of all nonessential nuclear and non-nuclear work by the contractor. As work resumed in November, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions facilities were […]

Two panels today will address the ongoing remediation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the wake of the March 2011 meltdown. The first session, “Cleanup of Fukushima NPP – D&D and Waste Management – is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to noon in Room 102BC. It will focus on the decommissioning plan for Fukushima […]

The Department of Energy and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, DOE’s management contractor for the Savannah River Site, will offer perspective and lessons learned on the two-month safety pause of all nonessential operations initiated in September 2015 when a small amount of plutonium was stored in a container not designated for transport. The session, “Lessons Learned […]

Decommissioning work for the STURGIS barge could be on hold another two months, as project coordinators said Monday that they are continuing to experience delays in implementing a solution to a potential equipment mismatch. Following a holiday break, crews had planned to return to work in February for the estimated $34.6 million decommissioning project in […]

PHOENIX — The public will get its first look at a new proposed consent agreement governing DOE cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) near Los Alamos, N.M. on March 30, a state official said here at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. “We’re targeting March 30 for the document to go up for […]

The Energy Department is seeking information, but no bids yet, about a contract to manage occupational medical services at the highly contaminated Hanford Site in Washington state, the agency said Monday. DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center released the sources sought/request for information online, with the aim of learning more about what industry can offer […]

After a morning plenary session in which the United Kingdom’s top nuclear decommissioning official extolled the virtues of transitioning nuclear cleanup partnerships with industry away from cost-reimbursable contracts, the head procurement official in the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) said such contracts will remain the cornerstone of legacy waste cleanup in the United […]

Sellafield Ltd has removed the entire bulk stocks of historic nuclear fuel from the pile fuel storage pond at Sellafield, the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) announced last week. Radioactivity levels in the 68-year-old pond have now been reduced by 70 percent, as a result of the effort. NDA’s cleanup plan of Sellafield, which is […]

The Energy Department said Friday it has finished upgrading a facility that cleans up off-site contaminated groundwater at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Ky. “Equipment at the C-612 Northwest Pump-and-Treat Facility that had reached the end of its service life or no longer had available replacement parts was replaced with newer equipment […]

The Energy Department has awarded Portsmouth Mission Alliance, a subsidiary of North Wind Solutions, a five-year, $139.7 million infrastructure support services contract at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio, the company said Saturday. The host of services covered by the contract at the former uranium enrichment site, which is undergoing decontamination and decommissioning, […]

Washington River Protection Solutions, the Hanford Site tank farm contractor, has helped Columbia Basin College (CBC) in nearby Pasco, Wash., purchase a state-of-the-art Q-Track simulator for its Nuclear Technology program laboratory. CBC is one of only two National Uniform Curriculum programs providing this equipment to train students in limiting their exposure to radiation. The simulator […]

While concerns have been raised about the proposed location of the Department of Energy’s new CERCLA landfill in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a DOE contractor is continuing to work on design of the waste-disposal facility. The department is evaluating a number of sites on the government’s Oak Ridge Reservation because of concerns raised by environmental regulators […]

The biggest problems typically attract the most attention in environmental cleanup, and that’s why every step in the development of a new mercury treatment facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee is monitored, measured, and put up for critique. The Department of Energy – as well as outside observers, such as U.S. Sen. […]

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was on the defensive this week in the first two congressional hearings of the year to dive deeply into his department’s budget request for legacy nuclear cleanup in fiscal 2017, with the White House’s proposal to change a long-established strategy for disposing of 34 metric tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium taking […]

A former employee of Energy Department contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) alleged the company bilked the federal government out of $20 million by covering up a leak in the double-shelled liquid-waste Tank AY-102 at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., according to a recently unsealed court documents. In a whistleblower complaint filed under seal in 2013 in […]

Following up on remaining safety issues related to the hazardous waste repository at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Area G, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has announced plans to hold a public hearing in Santa Fe on March 22. In a prepared statement DNFSB Chairman Joyce Connery said, “With the upcoming wildfire season, the […]

The Energy Department said Tuesday it is taking applications for membership on the Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board, which provides citizen feedback about the agency’s ongoing nuclear operations and cleanup activities at the Nevada National Security Site. “Ideal candidates are private citizens living in communities near the [the site] who are willing to volunteer their […]

The Energy Department has received two more years to come up with a plan for sending transuranic waste stored at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., to New Mexico for permanent disposal, but the waste must still be shipped out by 2030, according to a recently formalized modification to the site’s master cleanup agreement. DOE, the […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Stoller Newport News Nuclear (SN3) subsidiary retained its work as the major subcontractor to Wastren Advantage on the environmental surveillance, education, and research contract at the Energy Department’s Idaho Operations Office, the company said Wednesday. The subcontract to Wastren Advantage, a major cleanup contractor across the DOE weapons complex, is worth up […]

The Energy Department said Tuesday it is taking applications for membership on the Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board, which provides citizen feedback about the agency’s ongoing nuclear operations and cleanup activities at the Nevada National Security Site. “Ideal candidates are private citizens living in communities near the [the site] who are willing to volunteer their […]

Nuclear waste cleanup technology specialist Kurion announced Monday the completion of construction and acceptance testing for its prototype Modular Detritiation System (MDS). The company is touting MDS as the world’s first solution for removing tritium from sizable amounts of contaminated light water and enable the recycling or clean release of reactor cooling water at light-water reactors. […]

Lockheed Martin paid $5 million to settle whistleblower allegations the company mishandled nuclear waste at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Ky., a uranium enrichment facility the company once operated for the U.S. government for about 15 years, the Department of Justice said Monday. The government’s lawsuit alleged Lockheed Martin violated a key 1976 […]

The Hanford Site Tri-Party Agreement agencies are conducting a public involvement survey. The Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington State Department of Ecology are seeking feedback on the meetings and workshops they held during the last year, ways to improve informational material on Hanford cleanup, and preferred methods to receive information. […]