Decommissioning

AECOM subsidiary URS Energy & Construction has begun demolition of the G2 building at the Separations Process Research Unit in Niskayuna, N.Y., the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Monday press release. The Separations Process Research Unit, a Cold War-era plant used for researching the separation of plutonium from irradiated uranium that […]

URS CH2M Oak Ridge landed an award of nearly $3.6 million for the six months ended March 31, good for 94 percent of the total available to the prime cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s former uranium enrichment facilities near Oak Ridge, Tenn., according to the company’s latest award fee determination scorecard from DOE. In […]

AECOM subsidiary URS Energy & Construction has begun demolition of the G2 building at the Separations Process Research Unit in Niskayuna, N.Y., the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Monday press release. The Separations Process Research Unit, a Cold War-era plant used for researching the separation of plutonium from irradiated uranium that operated between 1950 […]

URS CH2M Oak Ridge landed an award of nearly $3.6 million for the six months ended March 31, good for 94 percent of the total available to the prime cleanup contractor for the former uranium enrichment facilities at the site near the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge site near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, according to the company’s latest […]

The United Kingdom expects to spend another £117 billion ($154 billion) on remediation of 17 of its oldest nuclear sites into the next century, according to the latest cost update issued Wednesday. That is down by about £1 billion from 2015, representing progress in cleanup over the past year, said Laurence Meehan, spokesman for the […]

The Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state now will be reduced to a covered concrete slab by Sept. 30, 2017 — one year later than planned — under a modification announced Thursday to the Tri-Party Agreement that governs cleanup of the former plutonium production facility. The delay has long […]

The United Kingdom expects to spend another £117 billion ($154 billion) on remediation of 17 of its oldest nuclear sites into the next century, according to the latest cost update issued Wednesday. That is down by about £1 billion from 2015, representing progress in cleanup over the past year, said Laurence Meehan, spokesman for the […]

The United Kingdom expects to spend another £117 billion on remediation of 17 of its oldest nuclear sites into the next century, according to the latest cost update issued Wednesday. That is down by about £1 billion from 2015, representing progress in cleanup over the past year, said Laurence Meehan, spokesman for the U.K.’s Nuclear […]

Sellafield Ltd. said this week it saved nearly $400,000 by using an advanced rolling scaffolding in the decommissioning of the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond at the Sellafield site. The scaffolding is easy to assemble, lightweight, and relatively inexpensive, according to a Sellafield press release. Money savings are derived from the work hours saved in assembly and […]

The Department of Energy has provided Washington state with a proposed plan requiring up to seven years of work to close the Hanford Site’s 324 Building, which sits above a highly radioactive spill. The plan was required to meet a Tri-Party Agreement milestone at the end of June to include the building in the Hanford […]

The Department of Energy has provided Washington state with a proposed plan requiring up to seven years of work to close the Hanford Site’s 324 Building, which sits above a highly radioactive spill. The plan was required to meet a Tri-Party Agreement milestone at the end of June to include the building in the Hanford […]

The Energy Department’s prime cleanup contractor for the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in upstate New York must explain to DOE how it will improve its policy to protect workers at the former plutonium separation facility from heat stress, but will otherwise face no penalties for an August incident during which a worker at the […]

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will continue its oversight of the Department of Energy’s cleanup of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site in south central Ohio, under a five-year, $3 million grant from DOE, The deal will be worth up to about $616,000 a year and will support ongoing activities funded under a previous grant […]

While its installation resulted in about $16.8 million in cost increases and a 12-month project timeline extension for the STURGIS barge decommissioning, a 440-ton crane that is key to the job is operating properly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday. The Corps, which is leading decommissioning of the onetime nuclear-reactor-equipped World War II Liberty Ship […]

The Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site continues to live up to its billing as the most dangerous and complicated cleanup at the former plutonium production facility near Richland, Wash., with a government watchdog disclosing Wednesday some close calls involving one of the plant’s radio-contaminated glove boxes. Difficulties with the facility’s last […]

The mercury cleanup at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee could cost up to $3 billion, according to an estimate in a newly released Department of Energy report. The report, which is dated February 2016, focuses on the technology plans to address the extensive mercury challenges at DOE’s Oak Ridge Reservation and the Savannah […]

MANCHESTER, England — Stakeholders leading the cleanup at the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning site in Cumbria, England, cannot tolerate decommissioning cost spikes, like the 25 percent increase experienced at the site in 2005, an executive for Sellafield partner EDF Energy said Wednesday. “(The 2005 hike) is not something that we can tolerate with the funding decommissioning […]

It’s been clear that the demolition of the K-27 Building — the last of five gaseous diffusion plants in Oak Ridge — has been running well ahead of its schedule for an end-of-year target date, and now the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager has confirmed that the contractor expects to complete demolition in “late summer/early […]

Decommissioning crews at Scotland’s shuttered Dounreay nuclear facility are using a household putty solution to gather metal samples from the base of the site’s Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR). In a press release Monday, organizers described how they forewent a new design and build project in favor of attaching Blu-Tack to the end of a long, […]

The Department of Energy may miss the Sept. 30 deadline to tear down the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., an agency spokesperson said late Thursday, and a new schedule is still in the works. “DOE is in discussions with regulators on a potential change to the milestone for completing […]

The estimated $16.8 million cost increase for the now-$51.5 million STURGIS barge decommissioning is largely due to the anticipated 12-month extension in completing the project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday. The STURGIS, a onetime World War II Liberty Ship that was fitted with a nuclear reactor that powered military and civilian operations in the […]

URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, continues to accelerate the demolition of the K-27 uranium-enrichment facility – the last of the five gaseous diffusion plants at the site now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park – and the progress is allowing the contractor to push ahead with […]

Uranium fuel supplier Centrus Energy trimmed its losses in the first quarter of 2016, after which it officially began closing down the industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration known as the American Centrifuge Plant (ACP) in Piketon, Ohio. The former United States Enrichment Corp. — which ceased enrichment operations in 2013, emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, and […]

The cost to decommission and dismantle the STURGIS barge is estimated to grow from $34.6 million to $51.5 million, resulting in part from compatibility issues between a 440-ton crane and the surrounding dock, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week. The timeline for completion of the project has also been pushed back an […]

The cost to decommission and dismantle the STURGIS barge is estimated to grow from $34.6 million to $51.5 million, resulting in part from compatibility issues between a 440-ton crane and the surrounding dock, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week. The timeline for completion of the project has also been pushed back an entire year, […]

About a dozen companies have begun delivering on an estimated £500 million socioeconomic benefit package as part of the decommissioning process at Britain’s Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning site that will create 1,140 jobs per year until 2025. The companies agreed to deliver the benefit package, termed the Decommissioning Delivery Partnership (DDP), in January as part of […]

Four electric power generators in western Japan have agreed to cooperate on an effort meant to improve emergency response and decommissioning at nuclear reactors. Kansai Electric Power Co., Chugoku Electric Power Co., Shikoku Electric Power Co., and Kyushu Electric Power Co. announced their effort to further augment the Cooperation Agreement Between Nuclear Operators in Nuclear […]

Editor’s Note: DOE sub-agencies with excess facilities are required to maintain those facilities until the Environmental Management office assumes responsibility for them. An earlier version of this story said those sub-agencies were not required to pay for this maintenance. A Department of Energy report that will determine which of the agency’s excess nuclear facilities get torn down first […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth marked a major cleanup milestone at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, taking out the final component of radio-contaminated process gas equipment from the X-326 facility, DOE said Wednesday. Fluor removed the last of more than 7,000 components on March 21, DOE said in a press release. Getting the […]

K-27, the last of five gaseous diffusion plants to be demolished at the government’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., complex, appears to be coming down quicker than any of its predecessors (K-25, K-29, K-31, and K-33). That may be due to lessons learned from earlier demolitions, an increasingly experienced workforce, and/or an unusual period of mild winter […]