Cleanup & Remediation

The Department of Energy is extending Swift & Staley as site services contractor at the Paducah Site in Kentucky through July 2024, the agency said in a procurement notice Monday. The move is meant to buy the DOE Office of Environmental Management time to recompete a contract agreement for the landlord services award made in […]

With the exception of a couple of projects at Europe’s largest and most complex nuclear site, the United Kingdom’s short-term cleanup goals for radioactive waste cleanup remain largely on target, the country’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said in its mid-2023 fiscal year report, published Friday. Timelines for certain cleanup projects at Sellafield Limited, a Nuclear Decommissioning […]

An investigative office within the Department of Energy is looking into a December 2022 accident at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina that resulted in an employee of the prime contractor having a finger amputated. The enforcement unit within DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments told Savannah River Nuclear Solutions president and CEO Stuart MacVean […]

Following a December court decision, the Department of Energy is officially canceling the solicitation that resulted in incumbent Swift & Staley winning — and then eventually losing — a new set-aside contract two years earlier for landlord services at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. “DOE has determined that canceling this solicitation is in the best […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still looking for a successor to its first executive director of operations, who left in August, the board said in a recent report to Congress. “The board is actively recruiting to fill that vacancy in 2023,” according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s 33rd Annual Report to […]

After several years of planning, the initial discard of uranium solution from the new Accelerated Basin De-inventory program at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., was successfully transferred to the SRS liquid waste program from the H Canyon Chemical Separations Facility, the Department of Energy said last week. The newly implemented Accelerated Basin De-inventory […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still looking for a successor to its first executive director of operations, who left in August, the board said in a recent report to Congress. “The board is actively recruiting to fill that vacancy in 2023,” according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s 33rd Annual Report to […]

Perma-Fix, Atlanta, closed out a tough 2022 with bigger losses and less revenue than a year ago, but the ill-effects of COVID-19 on the company’s business tapered off last year, the chief executive officer said last week. “While 2022 was a challenging year due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed projects […]

Valerie McCain, the Bechtel project manager in charge of building the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar waste vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, died unexpectedly, the company announced this week. “It is with great sadness that we share the news that Valerie McCain, project director of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant and […]

A U.S. appeals court recently upheld a nation-wide injunction against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most federal workers. The ruling 10-6 ruling on March 23 from a majority of judges on the New Orleans-based U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who heard oral arguments in September, upheld the January 2022 preliminary injunction issued […]

The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management has issued stopgap extensions to avoid lapses in nuclear cleanup work this week at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and treatment of a uranium enrichment byproduct there, and at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services will both receive contract extensions of […]

The Department of Energy will temporarily suspend some work to contain underground hexavalent chromium contamination at the Los Alamos National Laboratory while talks continue with New Mexico officials over the effectiveness of the treatment, officials said Wednesday night. The agency’s local Environmental Management field office and its site cleanup contractor will halt injection of clean […]

Perma-Fix, Atlanta, closed out a tough 2022 with bigger losses and less revenue than a year ago, but the ill-effects of COVID-19 on the company’s business tapered off last year, the chief executive officer said last week. “While 2022 was a challenging year due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed projects […]

The Department of Energy will temporarily suspend some work to contain underground hexavalent chromium contamination at the Los Alamos National Laboratory while talks continue with New Mexico officials over the effectiveness of the process, officials said Wednesday night. The agency’s local Environmental Management field office and its site cleanup contractor will halt injection of clean […]

Valerie McCain, the Bechtel project manager in charge of building the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar waste vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, died unexpectedly, the company announced. “It is with great sadness that we share the news that Valerie McCain, project director of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant and a Bechtel […]

Perma-Fix, Atlanta, closed out a tough 2022 with bigger losses and less revenue than a year ago, but the ill-effects of COVID-19 on the company’s business tapered off last year, the chief executive officer said last week. “While 2022 was a challenging year due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed projects […]

Following a December court decision, the Department of Energy is officially canceling the solicitation that resulted in incumbent Swift & Staley winning — and then eventually losing — a new set-aside contract two years earlier for landlord services at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. “DOE has determined that canceling this solicitation is in the best […]

A U.S. appeals court recently upheld a nation-wide injunction against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most federal workers. The ruling 10-6 ruling on Thursday from a majority of judges on the New Orleans-based U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of appeals, who heard oral arguments in September, upheld the January 2022 preliminary injunction issued by […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still looking for a successor to its first executive director of operations, who left in August, the board said in a recent report to Congress. “The board is actively recruiting to fill that vacancy in 2023,” according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s 33rd Annual Report to […]

Geiger Brothers, an Ohio-based engineering and contracting business, won a $9.9 million contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the K-25 viewing platform at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the corps announced Friday. The award from the U.S. Army Corps’ Nashville District was posted in a Friday notice […]

The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management has issued stopgap extensions to avoid lapses in nuclear cleanup work this week at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and treatment of a uranium enrichment byproduct there, and at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services will both receive contract extensions of […]

The Department of Energy is giving interested bidders two extra weeks to submit proposals for the new Occupational Medical Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a procurement notice published this week. Response to the partial request for proposals that came out last month are now due April 24 rather than the […]

The Department of Energy said this week crews have fixed the cause of the recent leak at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory and should start running the facility soon with a mixture of 90% simulant and 10% radioactive sodium-bearing waste. Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) crews on Tuesday “completed key […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After a congressional hearing Thursday, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the Department of Energy thinks the startup of the waste vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington will not slip too much further into the future. “I think we have a handle on it,” Granholm told the Monitor about big […]

A group of current and former Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio are again targets of a federal lawsuit, this one filed by a plaintiff suffering from cancer who attended a now-shuttered middle school near the former gaseous diffusion plant. Christian Rose, diagnosed in June with Burkitt Lymphoma, a cancer of […]

The Department of Energy has a nickname: “the Department of Everything,” the acting DOE nuclear cleanup boss told weapons complex citizen advisory board chairs this week.   The DOE Office of Environmental Management senior adviser William (Ike) White retold the joke during a Washington, D.C., meeting Tuesday. The description applies to an agency involved in issues […]

The 1,200 or so employees at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will almost-certainly be retired by the time the Hanford Site in Washington state is fully cleaned up, based upon the budget request issued last week by the White House. The acting boss for Environment Management, said last fall the nuclear cleanup […]

The federal watchdog for Department of Energy nuclear defense sites continues to pursue “an aggressive staffing plan” initiated over the past two years to make up for workforce brain-drain, according to an agency budget justification document issued last week. For fiscal year 2024, the administration of President Joe Biden (D) requested $47.2 million for the […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After a congressional hearing Thursday, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the Department of Energy thinks the startup of the waste vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington will not slip too much further into the future. “I think we have a handle on it,” Granholm told the Monitor about big […]

An article in the March 22 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [Hanford rattled by New Mexico statements on out-of-state waste] should have reported the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site is expected to become a big shipper to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in a few years and finish around 2050.