Cleanup & Remediation

Professional Project Services or Pro2Serve, appointed Sherry Browder as president and chief executive officer, the Tennessee-based Department of Energy contractor said Wednesday  In her new role, Browder, who last October was selected as the company’s president and chief operating officer, will be responsible for managing Pro2Serve’s offices, subsidiaries, contracts and staff nationwide, according to a […]

While changes in a legally-binding consent decree allow the Department of Energy more time to start turning low-level radioactive tank waste into glass at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the agency’s goal is still to start the work by the end of 2023, the top fed at the property said Wednesday. While DOE has […]

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), a candidate for the U.S. Senate, used a House Appropriation Committee markup Tuesday on a Department of Energy fiscal 2023 budget proposal to discuss health concerns and hopes for economic development at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. During the vote approving the Energy and Water Development subcommittee’s nearly $7.9-billion budget for […]

The full House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday voted 32 to 24 in favor of a fiscal year 2023 spending bill with almost $7.9 billion for nuclear weapons cleanup at the Department of Energy. That’s about even with the 2022 appropriation, and with the Joe Biden administration’s ask, taking into account the roughly $190 million the […]

House appropriators want to keep the Hanford Site’s budget flat in fiscal year 2023 and nixed the Joe Biden administration’s plan to increase the site’s liquid-waste budget at the expense of solid-waste programs, according to a bill up for debate in committee on Tuesday. Overall, the bill proposes roughly the $7.9 billion requested for DOE’s […]

Blaming the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Energy on Friday asked a federal court to extend by almost two years the deadline for beginning solidification of liquid waste at the Hanford Site. The request, unopposed by Washington state, was part of a motion filed Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of […]

Supply chain slowdowns are still gumming up work at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, a federal safety watchdog said recently. “General personal protective equipment such as nitrile gloves, rubber booties, Tyvek suits, respirator cartridges, and airline hoses have extended lead times up to six months,” the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said […]

Completion of the depleted uranium conversion program at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky could take three decades or more, an agency boss told the Paducah Site Citizens Advisory Board in Kentucky last week. Even before the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) plants in Paducah and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio went offline in […]

The Department of Energy says it is conceivable that one company or joint venture could win both multibillion-dollar contracts being sought at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. In an online filing last week, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said such an outcome is not out of the question, provided […]

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thompson Dietz last week released a public copy of an order refusing the government’s request to place a time limit on Department of Energy contractor Swift & Staley’s stay as landlord at the Paducah Site in Kentucky The company seeks to reverse the judge’s ruling the company is too […]

While the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected a 2018 workers compensation law affecting nuclear cleanup personnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, a state official predicted a revised version of the law approved earlier this year will survive. “Because the legislature already fixed the issues the federal government raised, there is little […]

Michael Nartker, the chief of staff for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, will leave the government to join DOE small-business contractor Longenecker & Associates, someone familiar with the move said Tuesday. Nartker has worked in various communications and external relations roles for DOE’s nuclear-weapons cleanup branch since 2015, capping his seven-year government […]

The National Defense Authorization Act passed early Thursday morning by the House Armed Services Committee roughly matches the White House’s modified request for the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons cleanup in 2023. The bill, an annual must-pass piece of legislation that sets policy and spending limits for military and civilian defense programs, would authorize DOE’s […]

The Department of Energy says it is conceivable that one company or joint venture could win both multibillion-dollar contracts being sought at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. In an online filing last week, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said such an outcome is not out of the question, provided […]

The National Defense Authorization Act passed early Thursday morning by the House Armed Services Committee authorizes nearly $315 million more for the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons cleanup in 2023 than the White House originally requested. The bill, an annual must-pass piece of legislation that sets policy and spending limits for military and civilian defense […]

The Department of Energy says it is conceivable that one company or joint venture could win both multibillion-dollar contracts being sought at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. In an online filing last week, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said such an outcome is not out of the question, provided […]

The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously struck down a 2018 Washington state law aimed at making it easier for Hanford Site workers to claim compensation for illnesses contracted on the job. The law unconstitutionally discriminated against federal workers and contractors, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in an opinion published Tuesday. Specifically, the court said, the state […]

Michael Nartker, the chief of staff for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, will leave the government to join DOE small-business contractor Longenecker & Associates, someone familiar with the move said Tuesday. Nartker has worked in various communications and external relations roles for DOE’s nuclear-weapons cleanup branch since 2015, capping his seven-year government […]

Completion of the depleted uranium conversion program at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky could take three decades or more, an agency boss told the Paducah Site Citizens Advisory Board in Kentucky last week. Even before the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) plants in Paducah and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio went offline in […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had 115 onsite cases of COVID-19 in the seven-days ended Thursday, unchanged from the week before, according to a spokesperson for the nuclear cleanup office. That’s 21 more onsite cases than the 94 the Office of Environmental Management confirmed during the week ended June 2 and about […]

State lawmakers in South Carolina this week to approved distribution of $525 million from a federal settlement the state won in 2020 after the Department of Energy failed to meet deadlines for removing plutonium from the Savannah River Site. The bicameral state legislature’s House and Senate ratified a budget bill apportioning the money from the […]

Hanford workers in Washington State who unsuccessfully challenged the site’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in federal district court are taking their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A group of 317 federal and contractor employees at the Hanford Site, three of whom say they have been fired from their jobs, filed […]

The subcontractor in charge of sinking a new utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., needs to fix potential safety hazards, the federal agency said in a recent assessment. While prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership and subcontractor Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers have a “generally adequate construction safety program,” they […]

The Department of Energy expects priority work at the Moab uranium tailings site in Utah to be largely done within four years, officials with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during a virtual briefing Wednesday. “We are getting close to closure,” at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings project, said Russell McCallister, […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management appointed Betsy Forinash, a 30-year veteran of nuclear-cleanup and regulatory work, as the deputy assistant secretary for waste and materials management, the cleanup branch said Thursday. Forinash’s selection was announced by Candice Robertson, acting principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management, or EM-2, in […]

The cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio has brought down the 56-acre X-326 Process Building, the agency said Thursday. The demolition of X-326 down to the slab is a big milestone for the DOE Office of Environmental Management and was telegraphed last week by speakers for the agency and contractor […]

The Department of Energy expects priority work at the Moab uranium tailings site in Utah to be largely done within four years, officials with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during a virtual briefing Wednesday. “We are getting close to closure,” at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings project, said Russell McCallister, […]

The planned meeting this week of the Department of Energy’s Idaho Citizens Advisory Board has been called off, according to a recent notice on the panel’s website. “Due to limited participation in our upcoming June [15] meeting and tour, DOE has decided it best to cancel the meeting,” according to a May 26 notice for […]

Hanford workers in Washington State who unsuccessfully challenged the site’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in federal district court are taking their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A group of 317 federal and contractor employees at the Hanford Site, three of whom say they have been fired from their jobs, filed […]

An article in the June 9 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“Nuclear cleanup leadership should be built to ‘span administrations,’ GAO reviewer says”] should have reported the DOE Office of Environmental Management is responsible for a half-trillion-dollars’ worth of environmental liability.