Cleanup & Remediation

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the new ranking member for the House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee, had strong words for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant yesterday, describing the project and its history of cost increases as an “open-ended bleeding wound” for the Department of Energy. Kaptur’s comments, which came during a subcommittee hearing in which […]

The new baseline for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility could increase the cost of the project by $2.8 billion and push back the startup of operations three years, an official from the Government Accountability Office said yesterday at a House Appropriations Energy and Water Development subcommittee hearing. In prepared testimony GAO Natural Resources and […]

A federal grand jury has returned indictments against 10 upper managers and supervisors for former Hanford tank farm contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group for their alleged roles in enabling timecard fraud. Ryan Dodd, the former vice president of retrieval and closure operations for CH2M Hill; Terrence Hissong, the former tank farms management director; and Patrick […]

Perma-Fix reported down numbers for a “challenging” full year of 2012 late last week, but indicated that public pressure on the federal government to clean up tank waste at Hanford could be “transformative” for the company. “We’re very excited about what we see are the various options at Hanford right now,” Chairman and CEO Lou […]

As the Department of Energy works to prepare a reprogramming request to Congress to shift funds among cleanup sites in an effort to mitigate the impacts of sequestration, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) warned the Department yesterday against moving money away from Hanford. “Recognizing the legal cleanup commitments that have been made by the Department of […]

Cleanup work underway at the Los Alamos National Laboratory appears to be a likely candidate to benefit from the reprogramming request the Department of Energy is working to submit to Congress, WC Monitor has learned. Much of the details of the request remain unclear, such as the amounts of funding to be transferred and the […]

Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility Contractor Shaw AREVA MOX Services earned 50 percent of its available award fee in fiscal year 2012, or about $4.4 million, according to information released yesterday by the National Nuclear Security Administration. This comes after last week an NNSA official revealed that the contractor earned no incentive fee in FY […]

Kevin Hall, the acting federal project director for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, is leaving the project in April for a post at the Oak Ridge site, NW&M Monitor has learned. Hall, who has served as deputy federal project director for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s MOX project, has led the project since FPD […]

A set of environmental activist groups is calling on the Department of Energy to drop plans to ship Hanford tank waste deemed to be transuranic material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for disposal. Instead, the Department should move forward with the construction of new waste tanks at Hanford, the groups said in a March […]

The Department of Energy has issued an amended Record of Decision that paves the way for the processing of additional spent fuel in the Savannah River Site’s H-Canyon facility, including about 1,000 bundles of used fuel stored at the site’s L-Basin. The aging fuel storage pool is filling up fast with domestic and foreign research […]

LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky, LLC, the cleanup contractor for the Paducah site, earned approximately 80 percent of its available fee in Fiscal Year 2012, according to information the Department of Energy released yesterday. Overall, LATA Kentucky earned $3,800,955 out of an available $4,727,674. LATA Kentucky’s fee included approximately $1.5 million out of an available […]

Fluor has agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it had improperly used federal money to lobby for funds for the HAMMER training center at Hanford, the company announced yesterday.  Fluor stressed in a release that it believes it did nothing “wrong nor unlawful,” but agreed to the settlement proposed by […]

This year’s set of House Cleanup Caucus briefings on the Department of Energy’s cleanup program will get underway April 25, with a presentation from DOE cleanup chief David Huizenga. The briefing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. in Room 122 of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington. Details of the other planned briefings, which are […]

The Department of Energy late last week awarded a task order to the MITRE Corporation for research and development work for the Office of Environmental Management. The $5.9 million task order has a nine-month base period and a nine-month option period. MITRE is a non-profit organization that manages contracts for the Internal Revenue Service, and […]

With less than a week to go, it remains to be seen whether the Department of Energy will be able to meet its goal to award the new Office of Legacy Management support services contract before the current one, held by S.M. Stoller, expires on April 9. When asked about the status of the procurement, […]

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is making it clear the Department of Energy’s cleanup efforts will be a major topic of discussion when the White House’s nominee for the next Secretary of Energy—MIT physicist Ernest Moniz—comes before his committee next week. “The next Secretary of Energy – Dr. Moniz – needs […]

With the clock running down before the across-the-board funding cuts known as sequestration are set to go into effect at the end of this week, officials with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management provided a glimpse yesterday of the potential impacts on DOE’s cleanup efforts. The sequestration process, which is set to go […]

With the clock running down before the across-the-board funding cuts known as sequestration are set to go into effect at the end of this week, officials with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management provided a glimpse yesterday of the potential impacts on DOE’s cleanup efforts. The sequestration process, which is set to go […]

Six of Hanford’s single shell tanks are leaking waste into the ground, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced Friday afternoon after meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu. That announcement came a week after Chu told Inslee that one of the tanks, T-111, appeared to be leaking, a first since pumpable liquids were removed in 2004. Whether […]

The Waste Management Symposium is set to kick off today at in Phoenix, Ariz. The week-long Symposium will run from Feb. 25 to 28, and feature plenary speakers such as Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner William C. Ostendorff, Department of Energy cleanup chief David Huizenga, and Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons. This year the […]

With the clock running down before the across-the-board funding cuts known as sequestration are set to go into effect at the end of this week, officials with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management provided a glimpse yesterday of the potential impacts on DOE’s cleanup efforts. The sequestration process, which is set to go […]

In the wake of the announcement late last week that six of Hanford’s underground single-shell waste tanks appear to be experiencing active leaks, Department of Energy cleanup chief David Huizenga said yesterday that “it’s too early to say” whether or not additional tanks may also be in a similar situation. “’We’re doing a comprehensive review […]

With the Department of Energy’s Tier 2 and 3 contractors growing increasingly concerned over an apparent shift by some prime contractors toward self-performing work, DOE Office of Environmental Management Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Project Management Jack Surash signaled yesterday that EM’s main focus is with its prime contractors. “In EM, the way I […]

  Dave Brockman has resigned as President and CEO of SA Technology and has taken an executive position with Kurion. SA Technology last month began evaluating options for selling the company. Brockman, who will be based in Richland, Wash., will focus on opportunities for Kurion’s technologies to support the Department of Energy’s high-level waste mission […]

Given the recent revelation that at least six tanks of high level waste at the Hanford site appear to be leaking, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) yesterday requested a Government Accountability Office investigation into the Department of Energy’s tank maintenance and monitoring procedures at Hanford. Wyden toured Hanford on Feb. 19, […]

In remarks that came just days after the Department of Energy officially announced that at least six of Hanford’s underground waste tanks now appear to be leaking, a former top Hanford tank farms contractor executive yesterday called into question the technology used to detect such leaks. “The technology that we use to decide whether they’re […]

House Appropriations Energy and Water Development subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) expressed concern about the rising costs of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility project at a budget hearing yesterday. Frelinghuysen noted the “limited funds” available to NNSA programs. “We don’t want this to suck up everything. There are a lot of things we need […]

Hanford site services contractor Mission Support Alliance earned about 90 percent of its fee for Fiscal Year 2012, according to information recently released by the Department of Energy. MSA earned about $19.1 million out of $21.2 million available for the period from October 2011 through September 2012. An award fee scorecard noted a number of […]

Enviro Compliance Solutions Inc. has won a new contract to perform environmental sampling, monitoring services and analysis of ongoing cleanup activities at the West Valley Demonstration Project, the Department of Energy announced late last week. The contract is an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity-type that’s set to run for three years with a total value of $4 […]

URS is seeking approximately $4.5 million in fee for some of the work it has performed at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) site, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. After a set of contamination incidents disrupted D&D work at SPRU in 2010, URS lost all of the originally available […]