Cleanup & Remediation

The new management team is in place at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to the Idaho Environmental Coalition’s website. The change was effective Jan. 1. The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has a potential ten-year, $6.4 billion contract and took  over from Fluor Idaho.  Ty Blackford is the president and program manager at the new team, […]

Over time, prominent historical figures such as Danish physicist Niels Bohr and New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra are said to have warned us that predictions are tough to make, especially about the future. So despite the obvious challenges of prognostication, Weapons Complex Monitor will open the year with a few observations about some big […]

The Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department were to hold an online public meeting Thursday evening to discuss cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under a 2016 consent agreement between the state and the feds that the state’s governor has lately criticized.  The meeting, run by the DOE Office of Environmental […]

The new management team is in place at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to the Idaho Environmental Coalition’s website. The change was effective Jan. 1. The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has a potential ten-year, $6.4 billion contract and took  over from Fluor Idaho.  Ty Blackford is the president and program manager at the new team, […]

Before Christmas, a federal judge rejected a request from 292 workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to temporarily block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate at the cleanup complex in Washington state, and lawyers had not filed new paperwork as of New Year’s. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington […]

A handful of employees at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have until Tuesday to respond to their employer’s motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit about the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Just after Christmas, on Dec. 27, U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley allowed the six employees of UT-Battelle, the University of […]

A federal district judge in South Carolina on Tuesday Dec. 28 refused to block the prime contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina from carrying out its vaccine mandate against employees who refuse to take the shot against COVID-19. U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs said because Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear […]

There were 71 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among workers for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch as of Dec. 16, down 16 from the prior week, a spokesperson for the office said in a Dec. 28 email. Also on Dec. 16 date, workers at DOE Office of Environmental Management sites had confirmed 7,416 cases […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend its existing business agreement by one year with a contractor doing studies to support the federal agency’s remediation at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California, according to a procurement notice published Dec. 16. The DOE Office of Environmental Management published a justification on SAM.gov for extending a […]

A Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management program has identified 360 abandoned uranium mines on tribal lands across the western U.S. and is working with other government agencies to assess the safety and environmental risk posed by the sites, Legacy Management said in a press release this month. About 96% of the sites identified […]

The Department of Energy could solicit bids for long-term management and storage of elemental mercury in January, the Office of Environmental Management said in a procurement update after Christmas. After court action by gold mining companies forced DOE to drop earlier plans to designate Waste Control Specialists in West Texas as its preferred long-term storage […]

A half-dozen employees suing the operator of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate have asked a federal court in Knoxville for two more weeks, until Jan. 4, 2022, to file their amended complaint. The plaintiffs filed their motion for the extension in the U.S. District Court […]

The head of the New Mexico Environment Department, James Kenney, supports a congressional committee’s call for the Government Accountability Office to examine practices at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. Kenney wrote this week to the U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), backing a request this month by […]

A nationwide injunction against contractor vaccine mandates should not apply to the management and operations contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Fluor-led team said in Monday court filing. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is a privately-held employer, the company said in a filing with the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, […]

The Department of Energy’s cleanup branch announced this week that Joel Bradburne is the new field office manager at the Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office, after acting as the top boss for operations in Ohio and Kentucky since Robert Edwards retired at the end of July. “In this role he will oversee the deactivation and demolition of […]

More than 90% of the federal employees and contract workers at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch have now been vaccinated against COVID-19, with more than 2,000 apparently still not taking the shot. “The vast majority of our [Environmental Management] EM workforce is vaccinated,” a spokesperson for the DOE Office of Environmental Management said […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site said this week that cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant is basically finished, while a nuclear boss with the Washington Department of Ecology indicated there is a general agreement about future remediation needs at the former plutonium production hub. Those were a couple of […]

With about a month to go before the Department of Energy planned return-to-work, about 60% of a 10,000-strong workforce at the Hanford Site in Washington state was on premises each day, site manager Brian Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board this week. While the DOE on Dec. 3 rolled out a plan to get most […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not publish on Dec. 24 in observance of the Christmas holiday or on Dec. 31 in observance of the New Year’s holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Monday, Jan. 3. Happy holidays!

With about a month to go before the Department of Energy planned return-to-work, about 60% of a 10,000-strong workforce at the Hanford Site in Washington state was on premises each day, site manager Brian Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board Wednesday. While the DOE on Dec. 3 rolled out a plan to get most federal […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site said Wednesday cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant is basically finished, while a nuclear boss with the Washington Department of Ecology indicated there is a general agreement about future remediation needs at the former plutonium production hub. Those were a couple of major takeaways […]

The Department of Energy’s cleanup branch announced Monday that Joel Bradburne is the new field office manager at the Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office, after acting as the top boss for operations in Ohio and Kentucky since Robert Edwards retired at the end of July. “In this role he will oversee the deactivation and demolition of the […]

There was “no impact” to Department of Environmental Management sites in Kentucky and Tennessee after a rash of unusual late-autumn tornados wrought death and destruction across the middle of the country over the weekend. “Thankfully, no impact to our EM sites,” a spokesperson for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) wrote Monday […]

With a federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate suspended at the site, employees put on unpaid leave because they would not take the vaccine were scheduled to return to work Monday at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a lab spokesperson told the Exchange Monitor. “To comply with the federal court order and the state’s suspension of its […]

A federal judge in Georgia this week blocked the Joe Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for contractors, almost exactly three months after Biden issued an executive order requiring shots for workers doing the government’s business. Most prime contractors at Department of Energy defense-nuclear sites had had their contracts modified to include a vaccine mandate well […]

Two years into the pandemic, the Department of Energy could see most of its federal employees return to their pre-COVID-19 work locations by mid-February, according to a Dec. 3 email message from agency leadership. The current “maximum telework” policy for DOE’s federal workforce will be phased out starting Jan. 18, Tarak Shah, chief of staff […]

Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, the same venture that last month challenged the Department of Energy’s issuance of the new Cleanup Contract, potentially worth $8.3 billion, at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, protested the contract again. A notice dated Dec. 3 on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) website showed another protest of the contract issued […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Department of Energy officials kicked off the National Cleanup Workshop here this week by praising the Office of Environmental Management and its contract workers for continuing remediation of nuclear site remediation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, in a pre-recorded message, thanked Environmental Management (EM) workers for “going into […]

ALEXIANDRIA, VA — The Department of Energy expects a new ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to come online between 2024 and 2026, the manager of the agency’s Carlsbad field office told Weapons Complex Monitor here this week. The agency’s Office of Environmental Management expects its rebaselining of the cost […]

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — During an address this week to the National Cleanup Workshop here, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) touched upon everything from Congress averting a government shutdown to the need for a new disposal site for nuclear debris at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. “We are either going to pass a budget or get […]