Cleanup & Remediation

Hanford workers received a reprieve Wednesday as furlough and temporary layoff notices were expected to start going out about noon. Instead, employees received a message from Department of Energy management saying that if Congress passes a spending bill this week, no furloughs and temporary layoffs are expected. DOE officials in Washington, D.C., told Hanford contractors […]

The Savannah River Site will close two additional entrance barricades tonight as a result of the government shutdown and will reduce staffing at two more barricades. Site security contractor Wackenhut Services Incorporated has been undertaking furloughs this week of 270 of its 706 employees, and the site shut down two barricades Sunday night. Effective midnight […]

The Department of Energy was fined $115,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday for past asbestos management issues at Hanford. Asbestos contamination was left in the soil, creating new waste sites to be cleaned up, and waste containing asbestos from building demolition was not properly labeled when it was sent to the Environmental Restoration […]

The University of California is seeking a small business subcontractor for a cleanup project to address a set of aging excess facilities at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s “old town” section. The subcontract would be for demolition engineering design services. “There are multiple buildings over a two acre site that are planned to be isolated; […]

Several key Department of Energy Environmental Impact Statements for the Office of Environmental Management have uncertain schedules for completion, according to a DOE EIS schedule posted last week. That includes the completion of an EIS for the disposal of greater-than-class-c low-level radioactive waste, which is marked “schedule uncertain.” After initial delays, EM had planned to […]

The lack of a senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management for the past two years has not impacted EM’s relationship with state regulators, an EM official said yesterday at the Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum. As DOE prepares to renegotiate key milestones at a number of sites, EM Senior […]

The Department of Energy is considering bringing to an end its use of Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity cleanup contracts once the two current sets of contracts expire, senior DOE Office of Environmental Management official Jack Surash said yesterday. EM currently has one unrestricted set of national ID/IQ cleanup contracts, which is held by 11 firms; and […]

The Department of Energy is considering breaking out contracts for engineering and construction of a new facility for processing sludge waste at Oak Ridge, Environmental Management Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition & Project Management Jack Surash said yesterday at the Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum. DOE last August told contractor Wastren Advantage, Inc. to stop […]

Environmental Chemical Company announced yesterday that it has been awarded a contract from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program to help in the cleanup of the Dupont Chambers site in Deepwater, N.J. The cleanup involves mostly soil remediation of the former uranium refinement facility. “It’s not a simple just dig […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board earlier this month closed out a recommendation from 2002 on design, implementation and maintenance of administrative controls, according to an Oct. 17 letter posted last week from DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur. The original recommendation raised issue with the “lack of rigor and quality assurance” for some administrative controls. In […]

The Department of Energy has scheduled a meeting for the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board Chairs for Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, after originally postponing it due to this month’s government shutdown. It will include an EM program update, which will include information on the budget and waste disposition strategies. The meeting had originally been […]

The Department of Energy and the state of Nevada plan to hold two public meetings next month on the Department’s plans to dispose of a portion of the uranium-233 stockpile at Oak Ridge at the Nevada National Security Site. The 403 canisters of uranium-233, known as the Consolidated Edison Uranium Solidification Project material, have been […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has established a new website for the procurement for the follow-on contract to provide environmental characterization and remediation services at the Nevada National Security Site. The procurement is still in the early stages, with NNSA having issued a sources sought notice in September to determine if the contract can continue […]

The Department of Energy has begun searching for a new official to help oversee the cleanup of the Department’s Idaho site, with Jim Cooper set to retire from his current position as Deputy Manager for the Idaho Cleanup Project at DOE’s Idaho Operations Office. The DOE Idaho Operations Office confirmed yesterday that Cooper has “submitted […]

Just one of six suspect single-shell tanks at Hanford is leaking waste into the ground, according to evaluations released Wednesday by the Department of Energy. However, the Washington State Department of Ecology does not agree with all of the conclusions reached by DOE and Washington River Protection Solutions. Both DOE and the state concur that […]

Santa Fe, N.M., Mayor David Cross Thursday urged Los Alamos National Laboratory to fully excavate and characterize buried waste at the Lab’s Technical Area-54, submitting a draft resolution that the city council will vote on next month. While LANL is considering leaving a portion of the waste buried in place, the resolution asks LANL to […]

The Department of Energy would like to begin early next year planned shipments of a portion of the uranium-233 inventory at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the Nevada National Security Site for disposal, Mark Whitney, the DOE cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, said yesterday in a call with reporters. The shipment of the 403 canisters […]

While a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board review of the Sludge Processing Buildouts Project at Oak Ridge did not identify major safety issues, it found several concerns that should be addressed before the project moves onto the next design phase. The sludge buildouts at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center are designed to process about 2,000 […]

The Department of Energy yesterday awarded a task order to Waste Control Specialists to receive waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The work is to dispose of 355 cubic yards of Class C Mixed Low-Level Waste that come from cleanup and remediation activities at LANL. The fixed price task order has a  $2,225,140 value, a […]

Babcock Services, a subcontractor to Hanford cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation, filed suit against CHPRC this week for damages it claims came from CHPRC breaking its contract. The case centers on “CHPRC’s complete indifference to contractual obligations it agreed to undertake with Plaintiff [Babcock Services, Inc.], including the improper termination of a contract and […]

Idaho Treatment Group, LLC, the managing contractor for the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, passed the Phase 2 validation of its Integrated Safety Management System late last week. The purpose of the Phase 2 validation, performed by the Department of Energy, was to verify that the procedures and policies reviewed in Phase 1 are in […]

The Department of Energy has begun a study on whether it should continue plans to co-mingle defense nuclear waste with commercial used fuel for long-term storage and disposal, which it plans to finish this fall. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said yesterday at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing that it is worth […]

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway late last week raised the threat of a possible lawsuit if delays are incurred in the cleanup of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. “General Conway believes that if the cleanup deadlines are not completed within the outlined timeframes, the federal government would be violating its legal agreement with the Commonwealth […]

Just days after announcing that one management vacancy had been filled, B&W-led Idaho Treatment Group, LLC, the managing contractor for the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, is looking at another empty spot in its set of key personnel. Late last week, ITG Deputy Project Manager and Vice President for Business Norm Sandlin retired, and has […]

Wastren Advantage Inc. won’t face a financial penalty for an incident that occurred at the Oak Ridge Transuranic Waste Processing Center earlier this year in which workers were inadvertently cut off from their breathing air during activities in the Box Breakdown Area of the TWPC. In a July 30 enforcement letter, the Department of Energy’s […]

The cost for completing D&D efforts at the Separations Process Research Unit appears to be continuing to grow, although there is no sign in sight as to when a final price tag for the project will be set or decisions made on how costs will be allocated between the Department of Energy and project contractor […]

New details have emerged on the Department of Energy’s latest plans to once again extend S.M. Stoller’s current contract to provide support services for DOE’s Office of Legacy Management as the Department continues to re-evaluate bids for the follow-on contract. While DOE said last week that it has provided Stoller with a notice of intent […]

A group of state environmental agency directors is calling on Congress to provide additional funding for the Department of Energy’s cleanup efforts in Fiscal Year 2014. In a letter sent to lawmakers earlier this week, the officials urged that Congress provide approximately $5.9 billion for DOE’s defense environmental cleanup activities and non-defense cleanup activities. In […]

Bechtel has split its Environmental business into two distinct business lines, with Principal Vice President Mike Hughes becoming general manager of the International Environmental business line and Principal Vice President Michael Graham becoming general manager of the U.S. Environmental business line. Both Hughes and Graham will report directly to Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure President Craig […]

The Department of Justice plans to intervene in part of a federal lawsuit against Washington Closure Hanford and two subcontractors alleging that false claims were made in respect to subcontract awards. The lawsuit was filed by Savage Logistics in 2010 after the company failed to win a subcontract. The Department of Justice plans to intervene […]