Cleanup & Remediation

Questions Persist Over DOE’s New Plans to Award Follow-On Contract Mike Nartker WC Monitor 7/3/2014 S.M. Stoller (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries) has received yet another extension to its contract to provide support services for the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management as the Department continues to work to award […]

Sellafield Launching £1.5 Billion Procurement for Cleanup Suppliers Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 7/3/2014 Sellafield Limited is looking to “broaden the base” for long-term cleanup suppliers at the U.K. site under a new 10-year agreement that could be worth up to £1.5 billion ($2.5 billion), Sellafield Chief Decommissioning Officer Jack DeVine told WC Monitor this week. […]

Workers Prepare to Enter ‘McCluskey Room’ at PFP WC Monitor 7/3/2014 Hanford workers are preparing to enter and clean out the McCluskey Room at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, the site of one of Hanford’s worst radiological accidents. It still contains the glove box where a 1976 chemical explosion shattered the windows of the box and […]

CWI Completes Sodium Treatment Ahead of Schedule WC Monitor 7/3/2014 Contractor CH2M-WG Idaho, LLC, has completed ahead of schedule and under budget an effort to clean up 480 pounds bulk sodium in drums at the Materials and Fuels complex. Using new techniques that included detailed modeling and redesigned injection nozzles, CWI finished the project seven […]

EnergySolutions Cuts TRU Workforce Further WC Monitor 7/3/2014 EnergySolutions, a subcontractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory involved in transuranic waste disposition, this week laid off 26 workers as a result of $20 million in funding being reallocated to the ongoing effort to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. “The number laid off on June 30 […]

DOE Official Happy With Community Outreach on Cleanup Priorities WC Monitor 7/3/2014 Sue Cange, the Department of Energy’s acting cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, said the federal team was “extremely pleased” with the feedback the agency received from last week’s community workshop addressing cleanup priorities and possible partnerships for future projects. “We are fortunate to […]

SRNS Working to Establish New Capability to Downblend Pu for WIPP  WC Monitor 7/3/2014 In order to continue downblending surplus plutonium for disposition, the Department of Energy is establishing a new capability in the Savannah River Site’s K-Area that is slated for completion next year.  The new plant would follow an initial round of plutonium […]

WC Monitor 7/3/2014 IN DOE The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board’s Task Force on Technology Development for Environmental Management is scheduled to hold a public meeting at DOE headquarters July 15. The task force has been charged with “assessing the value of a renewed EM science and technology development effort and how such a program […]

WC Monitor 7/3/2014 An article in the June 27 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor incorrectly listed the name of the incumbent environmental services contractor at the Nevada National Security Site as Navarro Nevada Environmental Services. The correct name is Navarro-INTERA, Inc. WC Monitor regrets the error. 

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 7/3/2014 The baseball field near the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. is suitable for public use, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded this week after conducting a gamma radiation screening of the site. The results of the test, conducted in early May, revealed that the Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex has […]

The baseball field near the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. is suitable for public use, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded this week after conducting a gamma radiation screening of the site. The results of the test, conducted back in early May, revealed that the Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex has only background radiation levels on […]

S.M. Stoller (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries) is getting a new three-month extension to its current contract to provide support services for the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management as the Department’s efforts to award a follow-on contract continue. Stoller’s latest extension would run from July 1 to Sept. 30, […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has named Padraic Fox as a new site representative at Hanford, effective in September. Fox will be the Board’s third site rep at Hanford, joining Robert Quirk and David Gutowski. Fox joined the Board’s technical staff in September 2009, and during his tenure he has been responsible for evaluating […]

A second deadline came and went late last week without resolution for the Department of Energy and the state of Washington to reach an agreement on how to modify a court-enforced consent decree that helps govern the cleanup of Hanford’s tank waste. The two sides have proposed differing approaches for modifying the consent decree after […]

The Department of Energy plans to hold an industry day on July 15 and July 16 for companies interested in bidding on the new Portsmouth Infrastructure Support Services procurement. DOE expects to issue a draft Request for Proposals before July 4, according to a notice posted Friday. A pre-proposal conference and Portsmouth site tour will […]

The New Mexico Environment Department is denying requests to extend 21 legally enforceable cleanup deadlines at Los Alamos National Laboratory after it failed to meet its high-profile transuranic waste removal target. LANL late last week posted 14 NMED notifications here that state that New Mexico has denied the lab’s requests to extend cleanup deadlines, while NMED says […]

FBP Resumes Off-Site Waste Shipments Halted Due to NDA Program Issues WC Monitor 6/27/2014 Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, LLC, the D&D contractor for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, this week resumed shipments of waste off-site for disposal that had been impacted by the contractor’s recent pause to its non-destructive assay program. FBP halted its NDA program in […]

Suit Filed Against Battelle Over 2011 Contamination Incident at INL WC Monitor 6/27/2014 The family of a worker contaminated by a 2011 incident at the Idaho National Laboratory is suing INL managing contractor Battelle Energy Alliance for damages related to the event. The suit centers on a Nov. 8 , 2011, event in which 16 […]

DOE Sees Reduction of Mercury into Local Creek WC Monitor 6/27/2014 It looks like the Recovery Act-funded cleanup of the old storm-sewer system at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant is finally starting to pay off with a reduction of mercury entering the East Fork Poplar Creek in Oak Ridge. “It looks like it’s getting better,” […]

DOE to Launch Safety Investigation at Pacific Northwest National Lab WC Monitor 6/27/2014 The Department of Energy’s Office of Enforcement is gearing up to launch an investigation into potential violations of DOE regulations at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The investigation could lead to financial penalties for the lab’s managing contractor, Battelle Memorial Institute. The […]

NDA Tells Lawmakers Sellafield Lifecycle Cost to Increase by £6 Billion Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 6/27/2014 Lifecycle cleanup costs at the U.K.’s Sellafield site have risen by more than £6 billion ($10.2 billion) from last year’s estimate, according to an annual financial report the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority submitted to Parliament this week. The current undiscounted […]

Todd Jacobson WC Monitor 6/27/2014 Raising questions about how much the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management supports National Nuclear Security Administration missions, the House Appropriations Committee last week directed $21.3 million in funding for nonproliferation work in Russia to go toward spent foreign fuel work at the Savannah River Site and the Idaho […]

Mike Nartker WC Monitor 6/27/2014   CH2M-WG Idaho is continuing to push to receive more fee for work performed under the initial Idaho Cleanup Project contract, taking its case to the General Services Administration’s Civilian Board of Contract Appeals. John Corsi, a spokesman for CH2M Hill, the lead company in CWI, declined to comment this […]

Mike Nartker WC Monitor 6/27/2014   The Department of Energy has decided to conduct a third evaluation of all of the bids submitted for the new Office of Legacy Management support services contract in response to a recent Government Accountability Office decision to sustain a protest filed over DOE’s award of the new contract to […]

Could Deactivation Contract be Awarded Soon? Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 6/27/2014   The Department of Energy and USEC have set an Oct. 1 date for completing the turnover of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant back to the Department. That schedule would require DOE to award the new Paducah deactivation contract by next week to have […]

Mike Nartker WC Monitor 6/27/2014 After months of planning, the Department of Energy officially announced this week that it will compete four new contracts for cleanup activities at the Idaho site post-Fiscal Year 2015. The new contracts—two of which will be competed on an unrestricted basis and two that will be set-aside for small businesses—are […]

Situation Could be Made Worse Over Pending Legal Action Over Uranium Transfers Mike Nartker and Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 6/27/2014 D&D efforts at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant are facing the threat of significant layoffs in Fiscal Year 2015 that could see the project’s workforce cut by approximately one-third. The situation at Portsmouth could be […]

Todd Jacobson NS&D Monitor 6/27/2014 Raising questions about how much the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management supports National Nuclear Security Administration missions, the House Appropriations Committee last week directed $21.3 million in funding for nonproliferation work in Russia to go toward spent foreign fuel work at the Savannah River Site and the Idaho […]

The Department of Energy yesterday officially announced plans to compete four contracts for post-Fiscal Year 2015 cleanup work at the Department’s Idaho site. Two of the contracts will be completed on an unrestricted basis, while two are being set-aside for small businesses. The new contracts are intended to replace those currently held by CH2M-WG Idaho, responsible for […]

The Department of Energy has decided to conduct a third evaluation of all of the bids submitted for the new Office of Legacy Management support services contract in response to a recent Government Accountability Office decision to sustain a protest filed over DOE’s award of the new contract to Portage. DOE informed bidders on the […]