Contracts & Procurement

The annual Bridging Partnerships Small Business Symposium, offering tips for small businesses interested in work at the Hanford Site, is set for April 18-19 at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, Wash. Cost to attend the symposium, presented by the Department of Energy and its Hanford prime contractors, is $100. The first day will […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has a busy procurement schedule for bid proposals and contract awards into 2019. The most recent Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center timeline for requests for proposals and contract awards was presented last month at the Waste Management Symposia by Norbert Doyle, EM’s acting deputy assistant secretary for […]

A radioactive mouse was discovered and later killed about seven weeks ago at one of the Savannah River Site radioactive waste storage tank farms, according to an occurrence report submitted to the Department of Energy. The quarterly report was submitted by Savannah River Remediation (SRR), liquid waste contractor for the DOE facility in South Carolina. […]

The Department of Energy has removed the fuel, but not the salt, from the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge, Tenn. An article in the April 10 Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the situation. Also, an article in April 9 Morning Briefing should have noted that a current procurement at the Y-12 National Security […]

The parties in the federal trial over vapors at the Hanford Site have requested another extension to the case, after failing to reach a settlement agreement before a deadline Monday for the plaintiffs to identify their expert witnesses. A joint motion requesting that Judge Thomas Rice delay the trial for a 10th time was filed […]

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, whose duties include overseeing big-ticket acquisition programs, attended a recent “deep dive” briefing on the Air Force’s B-21 Raider to better familiarize himself with the bomber development effort, a service official said April 9. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson said that he and prime contractor Northrop Grumman [NOC] also took part in the […]

Procurement officials at the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management are trying to reduce the typical two-year process for awarding major contracts to one year. Tamara Miles, federal procurement director for the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center, discussed efforts to expedite contract awards during a panel session last month at the Waste Management […]

The Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration are seeking bids on a new series of exascale supercomputers, including one at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that would cost up to $600 million and switch on early next decade, according to a request for proposals released Monday. Funding for the proposed Livermore […]

The parties in the federal trial over Hanford vapors have requested an extension yet again, after failing to reach a settlement agreement before a deadline Monday for the plaintiffs to identify their expert witnesses. A joint motion requesting that Judge Thomas Rice delay the trial for a 10th time was filed Friday in U.S. District […]

Purdue University on Friday confirmed it teamed with Bechtel National, Reston, Va., on a bid to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — a teaming arrangement first reported by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing’s sister publication in February. The confirmation came Friday from Mitch Daniels, president of Indiana-based Purdue University. Daniels spoke to […]

With an industry pre-proposal site tour set for Tuesday, the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility contract solicitation In Oak Ridge, Tenn., is already drawing a lot of questions from prospective bidders. Fourteen questions and answers were posted on the solicitation website April 6. They cover everything from conflict of interest, to weight limits for dump […]

A former employee’s discrimination federal lawsuit against the management and operations contractor for the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site has been dismissed due to a lack of sufficient evidence. Now, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) is trying to recover just over $900 from the former plaintiff to cover costs associated with printing documentation for the […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory contracted out just shy of 60 percent of its total procurement dollars to small businesses in fiscal 2017, handily exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for the nation’s oldest nuclear-weapon lab. In the penultimate year of Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) management and operations contract, the northern New Mexico weapons […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex had not cast any enriched uranium for national defense programs for about a week as of Friday, after an unspecified quantity of the fissile material leaked into casting machinery at the National Nuclear Security Administration plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Casting furnaces at Y-12’s 9212 building — operated by the […]

Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) is on schedule at the end of April to take over as the new legacy cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico. “We are ready to get started,” Nick Lombardo, president and project manager for the joint venture between Stoller Newport News Nuclear […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is taking steps to address a recent series of errors in waste handling that earned it a state penalty, and to keep them from recurring, a spokesman said Wednesday. Among other measures, LANL voluntarily suspended all waste shipments from Dec. 18 through Feb. 28, while it investigated […]

In her first official visit to an Energy Department cleanup site since being sworn in last week, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White toured the Paducah Site in Kentucky on Thursday. She was part of a delegation including Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). After touring […]

Phil Breidenbach, former president and project manager for the contractor that manages the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has been named chief engineer for the current liquid waste manager at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Breidenbach is a vice president at AECOM, lead partner at Savannah River Remediation, along […]

Phil Breidenbach, former president and project manager for the contractor that manages the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has been named chief engineer for the current liquid waste manager at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Breidenbach is a vice president at AECOM, lead partner at Savannah River Remediation, along […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is taking steps to address a recent series of errors in waste handling and keep them from recurring, a spokesman said Wednesday. Among other things, LANL voluntarily suspended all waste shipments from Dec. 18 through Feb. 28, while it investigated how it had mislabeled a container of […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has awarded the Southwest Research Institute a contract worth as much as $52 million over five years to continue operating the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses. The San Antonio-based research and development organization has managed the center since its inception 31 years ago. Its original mission was to provide […]

Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) is on schedule at the end of April to take over as the new legacy cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico. “We are ready to get started,” Nick Lombardo, president and project manager for the joint venture between Stoller Newport News Nuclear […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory contracted out just shy of 60 percent of its total procurement dollars to small businesses in fiscal 2017, handily exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for the nation’s oldest nuclear-weapon lab. In the penultimate year of Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) management and operations contract, the northern New Mexico weapons […]

The Department of Energy says it should get to keep around $20 million in fees it clawed back from a contractor that failed to build a major nuclear-nonproliferation project in South Carolina on time. The federal agency’s filing in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims last week was the latest turn in one of the two slow-simmering […]

A federal bankruptcy judge in Akron, Ohio, has set an April 16 hearing on whether FirstEnergy Solutions should be held to $765 million worth of contracts as it seeks Chapter 11 protection. Judge Alan Koschik granted FirstEnergy Solutions a temporary injunction Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of Ohio to prevent the […]

Days after the Department of Energy (DOE) gave the go-ahead to start building key parts of a $6.5 billion facility to process uranium for U.S. defense programs, a federal judge ordered a venue change in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the plant’s construction. Three environmental groups and four individuals filed suit in July 2017 in […]

A federal judge has given former Hanford Site contractor Washington Closure Hanford and the Department of Justice a three-week extension to finalize a settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit over alleged subcontracting fraud. Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. on Monday set a deadline for April 13. If the deadline is not met, a status conference will […]

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has approved the Chapter 11 reorganization plan for Westinghouse Electric, which said the authorization paves the way for its sale to a Canadian asset management company. The reorganization plan was overwhelmingly supported by Westinghouse’s creditors, the company said in a Tuesday news release. Brookfield […]

A U.S. Energy Department official last week defended plans for an on-site waste disposal cell at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site in Ohio The disposal cell, intended to hold 2 million cubic yards of waste resulting from decontamination and decommissioning of buildings at Portsmouth, benefits the environment, reduces the amount of land in need […]

Having already granted one contract extension, the U.S. Energy Department proposes to keep incumbent Savannah River Remediation (SRR) in charge of liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina into 2019. In a March 21 notice on a federal contracts website, DOE announced plans to retain SRR for up to another 10 […]