Cleanup & Remediation

A group called Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, has protested the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee awarded last month to an Amentum-Jacobs partnership. That’s according to a contract challenge dated Monday and posted to the Government Accountability Office’s website.  Debriefs were held last week on two major contracts […]

As expected, the Washington state attorney general has filed formal arguments saying there is no need for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit an appeals court ruling that backed a state law boosting workers’ compensation eligibility for Hanford Site employees with certain work-related illnesses. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed his 45-page “brief in opposition” […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said COVID-19 infection rates are falling around the complex near the Georgia line. “The good news is for the first time in some time we have no one in the hospital,” Michael Budney, manager of the DOE Office of Environmental […]

Members of the Hanford Atomic Metals Trade Council at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state have ratified labor agreement extensions for much of the unionized workforces of four of the largest federal contractors at the nuclear cleanup site, according to a recent Facebook post by the council. “All four of the contractor’s […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico received 17 shipments of transuranic waste during October, according to figures posted on its public website. That means the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has now received 166 shipments of the defense-related waste so far this calendar year, a figure nearly identical to […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: November 14-19: SC21, supercomputing conference. America’s Center. St. Louis. In-person and virtual sessions. Agenda here. 15: Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board starts two-day meeting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time at the Holiday Inn-Beach House in Hilton […]

The Small Business Administration again ruled that incumbent Swift and Staley is too large to be the next landlord services provider at the Department of Energy’s Paducah site, kicking the matter back to a federal court and keeping the company on site at least through February 2022.  That’s according to a Friday filing in the […]

Declining to block the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a judge ruled Monday that Los Alamos National Laboratory Employees who will not take a required COVID-19 vaccine and are unsatisfied with receiving unpaid leave as their religious exemption from the shot must hash things out with the lab in arbitration. Pending the outcomes of other lawsuits […]

The Department of Energy does not expect a delay to a crucial cesium-removal demonstration at the Hanford Site’s tank farms, despite the discovery last month that parts of the system might be prone to leaks, an agency spokesperson said this week.  The “leak-tightness” issue, as the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) called it in […]

Before it even started, the Department of Energy this week cancelled a competition for a Savannah River Site management and operations contract worth billions, citing an increase of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons work at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is indefinitely delaying the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the […]

Centrus Energy, Bethesda, Md., on Wednesday posted net income of about $41.5 million, or $2.95 a share for the 2021 third quarter, up from a loss of $7 million or 83 cents a share, in the year-ago period.  Quarterly revenue was about $91 million, up from more than $57.5 million a year ago, mostly due […]

A United Steelworkers local president at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio expects about 100 of his members employed by cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth will be sent home in the coming week, with firings coming a few weeks afterward, for refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The workers who for various reasons don’t […]

Before it even started, the Department of Energy this week cancelled a competition for a Savannah River Site management and operations contract worth billions, citing an increase of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons work at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is indefinitely delaying the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the […]

Exchangemonitor.com has refreshed its website and now posts news and commentary from across the defense- and civilian-nuclear industries in (near) real time.  If you haven’t gotten used to checking exchangemonitor.com throughout the day, we could hardly blame you. Our old website didn’t allow us to push updates to you as quickly as we could write […]

Ninety people suing the contractor over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate lack valid legal arguments or safety concerns and “simply do not want to do what is being asked,” the manager of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said in a legal filing this week. That is the thrust of Fluor-led Savannah […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still hammering the Department of Energy about a nearly decade-old recommendation to stiffen safety requirements at Savannah River Site’s Building 235-F to avoid a plutonium release from the aging structure. In a Nov. 2 letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Joyce Connery, the board chair, praised DOE […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons remediation contractor at the Los Alamos National Lab will resume normal operations at the lab’s Area G next week, DOE’s local cleanup fed told a citizens advisory board this week. “We are resuming normal operations, processing operations at Area G next week,” Michael Mikolanis, manager of the DOE Environmental Management […]

Under current projections, the Department of Energy could process nearly all of the salt waste inventory from 43 high-level radioactive waste tanks at the Savannah River Site by 2033, the top official for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management there said recently. The 2033 date cited by Michael Budney, manager of the Savannah River Operations […]

As soon as next week, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should issue a draft solicitation for a Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said recently. The draft request for proposals (RFP) should show up sometime between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17, the agency’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office […]

The volume of low-level radioactive waste shipped to the Nevada National Security Site from Department of Energy cleanup sites is picking up again after dipping to half of its normal level of more than 1 million cubic feet per year during the pandemic, an agency official at the site told the Nevada Site Specific Advisory […]

More than 90% of the workers for both the Department of Energy environmental management field office and the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, are now vaccinated against COVID-19, a federal official told a DOE advisory committee Wednesday. In addition, cleanup of radioactive contamination on a stretch of a […]

As soon as next week, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should issue a draft solicitation for a Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said recently. The draft request for proposals (RFP) should show up sometime between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17, the agency’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office […]

The Department of Energy does not expect a delay to a crucial cesium-removal demonstration at the Hanford Site’s tank farms, despite the discovery last month that parts of the system might be prone to leaks, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The “leak-tightness” issue, as the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) called it in a […]

In 2020, Dan Brouillette, then-President Donald Trump’s second energy secretary, allegedly violated the Hatch Act — the law that prevents public servants from campaigning for or supporting candidates for office, the special counsel said in a report Tuesday.  Brouillette and 12 other Trump administration officials were implicated in the findings. According to the report, Brouillette […]

As part of a foundation-shaking corporate split announced Tuesday, General Electric said its nuclear services arm will be managed by a future spin-off company focused on the energy sector. General Electric’s (GE) power segment will be subsumed into a new business “positioned to lead the energy transition” in early 2024, the company said in a […]

Before it even started, the Department of Energy on Tuesday cancelled a competition for a Savannah River Site management and operations contract worth billions, citing an increase of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons work at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is indefinitely delaying the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the […]

Under current projections, the Department of Energy could process nearly all of the salt waste inventory from 43 high-level radioactive waste tanks at the Savannah River Site by 2033, the top official for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management there said recently. The 2033 date cited by Michael Budney, manager of the Savannah River Operations […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is still hammering the Department of Energy about a nearly decade-old recommendation to stiffen safety requirements at Savannah River Site’s Building 235-F to avoid a plutonium release from the aging structure.  In a Nov. 2 letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Joyce Connery, the board chair, praised DOE […]

Here are some events related to defense and civilian matters that the Exchange Monitor staff is tracking this week: November 9: Virtual event, Hudson Institute. What’s Next for AUKUS? A discussion with Ambassador Sinodinos. 12 p.m. Eastern time with the Australian ambassador. AUKUS us the trilateral partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States […]

This week, the Department of Energy will brief losing bidders about its rationale for awarding multi-billion-dollar nuclear-cleanup contracts to teams led by Amentum and BWX Technologies, a senior industry official said last week at the Radwaste Summit in Summerlin, Nev. The executive made the comments on the sidelines of the annual summit, sponsored by ExchangeMonitor […]