Cleanup & Remediation

U.S. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ cleanup plan for its Niagara Falls Storage Site received overwhelming support from stakeholders, with the public comment period closing Feb. 6. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Niagara County Department of Health, the town of Lewiston, N.Y., and the Tuscarora Nation Native American tribe all wrote in support of […]

The Plutonium Finishing Plant is another step closer to being torn down after decades of work to clean out the heavily contaminated facility at the Hanford Site in Washington state. This week the Department of Energy announced that both of the 12-foot-tall glove boxes in the plant’s main processing building had been cut up, removed, […]

An article in the Feb. 12 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor, “Hanford Liquid Cleanup OK in Budget, but Big Cuts for Other Areas Proposed,” should have said: The total cost of the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, including Bechtel’s $11.4 billion prime contract to build the facility, is $12.3 billion. The White House for 2017 requested […]

Moab uranium mill tailings remediation project contractor Portage Inc. earned 84 percent of its potential award fee for fiscal 2015, the Department of Energy said on Thursday. The $1.26 million fee came with a rating of “very good” for the year. The department’s Office of Environmental Management particularly lauded Portage’s work in recovering from a […]

With groundwater cleanup at the Energy Department’s Idaho Site progressing slower than expected, DOE is giving itself until September 2019 to test out some fixes, an agency official told members of an agency-chartered citizen group last week. That is according to slides Nicole Badrov, a senior DOE manager in Idaho, presented to the Idaho National […]

A worker at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., on Jan. 21 plunged 4 feet into an old septic tank he was attempting to dig out of the ground to clear space for plumbing that eventually will pipe liquid waste out of leaky underground waste storage tanks. The man, a subcontractor for Hanford tank-farm […]

Remaining Hanford Costs Tagged at $107.7B The remaining cleanup costs at the Hanford Site plus some limited long-term stewardship come to $107.7 billion, according to the 2016 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report. The estimate a year ago was $110.2 billion. The report has been a requirement of the Tri-Party Agreement for the last […]

HB Line, a facility that assists the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon facility in processing nuclear materials, is expected to exit a reduced work phase next month as site contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) advances toward resumption of full normal operations. SRNS, the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor, self-induced an operational safety […]

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the Department of Energy to prepare a corrective action report by the third week of April after the spread of radioactive contamination was discovered at the Hanford Site following a November windstorm. Some contamination from the 618-10 Burial Ground was found across Route 4, a public road between the […]

It could be two years before local residents have any answers concerning a potential link between apparent health problems and Manhattan Project radioactive waste that may have washed into St. Louis County’s Coldwater Creek. The St. Louis County Department of Public Health has teamed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances […]

The annual Hanford Site budget public meeting is set for 5:30 p.m. March 15 at the Richland, Wash., Public Library. The meeting to discuss fiscal 2018 cleanup priorities for the budget proposal is planned by the Tri-Party agencies – the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington state Department of Ecology. DOE […]

Spent fuel processing efforts at the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon facility have resumed for the first time in three years. Heralded as the nation’s only chemical separation facility still in operation, H Canyon meets environmental management (EM) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) goals for the Department of Energy, with the spent fuel campaign […]

The energy Department’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management is seeking volunteers to fill vacancies on the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board. The board is a federally chartered citizens’ panel that provides policy recommendations about legacy nuclear cleanup at the Oak Ridge Reservation. The deadline for submitting applications is March 15, DOE said in […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, prime contractor for cleanup at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, did not perform required reference checks on people it hired at the site over the past three fiscal years, the DOE inspector general said in a report dated Feb. 19. The IG published the finding after reviewing 25 percent of Fluor’s new hires […]

The remaining cleanup costs at the Hanford Site plus some limited long-term stewardship come to $107.7 billion, according to the 2016 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report released this week. The estimate a year ago was $110.2 billion. The report has been a requirement of the Tri-Party Agreement for the last six years to provide […]

HB Line, a facility that assists the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon facility in processing nuclear materials, is expected to exit a reduced work phase next month as site contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) advances toward resumption of full normal operations. SRNS, the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor, self-induced an operational safety […]

The supply-chain manager for DOE’s prime cleanup contractor at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee will discuss the Energy Department’s budget for dealing with excess nuclear facilities at a monthly industry dinner slated for Thursday in Oak Ridge. The dinner, hosted by the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association of Tennessee, is set for 5:30 p.m. […]

International environmental solutions provider Veolia last week announced the selection of a new president and CEO of its North America branch. William DiCroce has been with Veolia since June 2008, most recently serving as president and chief operating officer of Veolia North America’s municipal and commercial operation. The 20-year veteran of the nuclear industry replaces […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ cleanup plan for its Niagara Falls Storage Site received overwhelming support from stakeholders this month, with the public comment period closing Feb. 6. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Niagara County Department of Health, the town of Lewiston, N.Y., and the Tuscarora Nation Native American tribe all wrote in support […]

With groundwater cleanup at the Energy Department’s Idaho Site progressing slower than expected, DOE is giving itself until September 2019 to test out some fixes, an agency official told members of an agency-chartered citizen group last week. That is according to slides Nicole Badrov, a senior DOE manager in Idaho, presented to the Idaho National […]

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the Department of Energy to prepare a corrective action report by the third week of April after the spread of radioactive contamination was discovered at the Hanford Site following a November windstorm. Some contamination was found across Route 4, a public road between the city of Richland and the […]

Fluor Corp. said last week that its 2015 earnings were hit hard by a $240-million pension settlement and expenses related to a gas-fired power plant in Virginia that is taking longer than expected to open. The Irving, Texas-based construction and energy giant, which in February won a $1.4 billion contract to manage legacy waste cleanup […]

New management has been assigned to the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant and work is being rescheduled after continuing safety problems. “Over the past few months, we’ve experienced a number of safety-related events that, while they didn’t cause any serious injury, are unacceptable,” said John Ciucci, president of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., in a […]

Industry is again girding for a policy fight over a White House proposal to partially fund legacy uranium cleanup in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee with private contributions that professional groups are calling a new tax on nuclear power. At issue is the White House’s request that Congress reauthorize industry payments, via additional charges on domestic utilities, to the Uranium […]

Final Hanford Downwinders Case Dismissal Appealed Dismissal of the final claim from the 1991 Hanford Site downwinders litigation has been appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after U.S. Disgtrict Judge William Fremming Nielsen moved to declare all claims resolved and close the case. Nielsen dismissed the claim filed by the estate of […]

New milestones being proposed by the Tri-Party Agreement agencies for central Hanford remediation operations are unprecedented, only extending cleanup and not offering any project acceleration to balance that, according to the Hanford Advisory Board. It has sent a letter of advice to the Department of Energy and its regulators for the Hanford Site – the […]

The Fluor-led team that won a $1.4 billion contract for legacy-waste cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Idaho Site near Idaho Falls, Idaho, will hold on to the work, now that the deadline for the mystery bidder to protest DOE’s award has passed. DOE on Feb. 4 announced Fluor Idaho had won the so-called Idaho Cleanup […]

A headline in Tuesday’s Weapons Complex Morning Briefing should have read “Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board Gets Kudos From Local Chamber.”

The Energy Department in May will host a small business forum for companies and academics interested in demonstrating technology to help with nuclear cleanup at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.. The Small Business Forum Technology Demonstrations and Opportunities will take place May 19-20 at the University of South Carolina Convocation Center in Aiken, DOE […]

Dismissal of the final claim from the 1991 Hanford Site downwinders litigation has been appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after U.S. Disgtrict Judge William Fremming Nielsen moved to declare all claims resolved and close the case. Nielsen dismissed the claim filed by the estate of Frieda Seaman, saying it had not been […]