High-Level & Tank Waste

Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor for the Savannah River Site, has completed bulk grouting activities at Savannah River’s Tanks 18 and 19, moving them closer to operational closure. Grouting work began at the two tanks, which have been largely emptied of radioactive waste, in early April and since then, more than 3 million […]

URS Energy and Construction is seeking to have a federal court dismiss a lawsuit filed by Walter Tamosaitis, a former contractor executive at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant who has alleged he was removed from the WTP for raising safety concerns. In a motion for summary judgment filed late last week in the U.S. District […]

Fluor executive Judith Hiatt-Rabb has been tapped as Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ new project manager on the trouble Waste Solidification Building, arriving at the site in her new role this week. Hiatt-Rabb, who has more than 26 years of project and construction management experience at Fluor within its Power, Energy and Chemicals, and Government Business […]

Washington state environmental regulators are continuing to push the Department of Energy to identify a preferred supplemental waste treatment approach in the final version of the Hanford Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement. In a letter sent late last week to Tracy Mustin, the No. 2 official in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, […]

The Savannah River Site’s Citizen’s Advisory Board is urging the Department of Energy to develop shipping containers for vitrified waste on site and look into disposing the waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Following the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain project, disposal in WIPP represents a “promising and likely approach” to disposition of canisters […]

The Department of Energy’s new Tank Waste Corporate Board will hold its first meeting in Idaho today, seeking to strengthen tank waste efforts that have been ham-strung by funding cuts and significant stumbles on the construction and startup of a trio of plants that will treat the waste. In a statement yesterday, DOE spokesman Colin […]

The Department of Energy has formed a new team of high-level experts to help resolve technical issues related to the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant’s so-called “black cells”—areas of the plant that will be off-limits for humans to enter to perform maintenance once the facility goes into operation—WC Monitor has learned. The team, which is set […]

The state of Washington will not immediately go to dispute resolution over consent decree deadlines that will be missed at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) said late last week. But she also will not allow the Department of Energy to “throw in the towel” on the deadlines and tell the state […]

  Parsons has been given another week to resolve a dispute with the Department of Energy over the return of approximately $20 million in provisional fee paid for work on the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility. In a May 31 letter, DOE originally gave Parsons until June 15 to “liquidate the debt” owed […]

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu raised the possibility of becoming directly involved with a look at Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant technology during a visit to Hanford late last week. He is likely to assemble the sort of panel of brilliant and creative thinkers he’s brought together after the Fukushima, Japan, nuclear disaster and the Gulf […]

The Department of Energy may be close to giving up on plans to have the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility begin operation in late 2015, WC Monitor has learned. Yesterday, a team of DOE officials from Savannah River, led by SWPF Federal Project Director Tony Polk, briefed Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman […]

Technical issues appear to have derailed the Department of Energy’s plans to begin processing actual waste at the Idaho Sodium-Bearing Waste Treatment Facility this month. The facility has been put in a “safe standby mode” in the wake of a “system pressure event” that occurred during testing activities on June 16, according to a DOE […]

Lingering technical issues have forced the Department of Energy to decouple, at least for now, two of the main facilities that make up the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant from the rest of project’s baseline, leaving DOE’s largest and most expensive construction project without a comprehensive cost and schedule estimate and no timeline for getting one. In […]

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) yesterday offered harsh criticism for the Department of Energy’s new plans for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant that, in effect, decouple two of the plant’s main facilities from the rest of the project. Earlier this week, DOE announced that it is putting off the development of a comprehensive cost-and-schedule estimate for […]

The Department of Energy’s new plan to pursue additional testing to resolve lingering technical issues at two of the main facilities at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is not likely to lead to additional layoffs at the project, as long as a funding level of $690 million per year is maintained in Fiscal Years 2013 […]

The Department of Energy has once again demanded the return of $20 million in provisional fee paid to Salt Waste Processing Facility contractor Parsons, reiterating its requirement for the immediate repayment of the money in a July 2 letter, obtained by WC Monitor. “Based on Parsons submittal of the updated Estimate of Completion on March […]

The Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held the first in a series of meetings yesterday to attempt to resolve issues raised in a recent NRC report regarding the disposal of low-level waste in saltstone at the Savannah River Site. Last week, the NRC released a Technical Evaluation Report questioning if DOE’s modeling […]

Department of Energy and contractor officials are scheduled to meet today in Richland, Wash., for a workshop to discuss various potential alternatives for high-level waste processing at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. The purpose of the one-day workshop, according to a copy of the meeting agenda obtained by WC Monitor, is to evaluate “HLW direct […]

EnergySolutions yesterday pointed at the Savannah River Salt Waste Processing Facility contract—where the company is a subcontractor to SWPF contractor Parsons—for much of the blame for its net loss of $0.7 million for the first quarter of 2012. Because of cost overruns on the project, and ongoing contract negotiations between Parsons and the Department of […]

The first set of long-awaited vessels for the Salt Waste Processing Facility will arrive on the Savannah River Site on Thursday and be off-loaded as early as that afternoon. In all, six vessels are expected to arrive at the site between Thursday and Saturday, with all six scheduled be off-loaded by Monday. A second set […]

Hanford tank farms contractor Washington River Protection Solutions released an expression of interest late last week seeking companies capable of removing cesium from tanks in preparation for eventual processing of the liquid waste at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. Out of the 57 million gallons of underground tank waste at Hanford, about 4 million […]

The Department of Energy has given conditional approval to Parsons Salt Waste Processing Facility Project Manager Lou Jackson as his 90-day evaluation period comes to a close this week. However, final approval for the construction contractor’s choice to head the project is contingent on several “performance-related” conditions, and there is no timeline for final approval, […]

Here are some events we’re following this week:  Today the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be holding a conference call from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. to discuss issues related to salt waste disposal at the Savannah River Site.   The NAS Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board is scheduled to hold a meeting May 30. Among […]

A dispute between the Department of Energy and Parsons over the return of approximately $20 million in provisional fee paid for work on the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility grew more heated late last week, with DOE threatening to withhold payments on contractor invoices if the provisional fee is not returned, WC Monitor […]

After several preliminary drafts, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed final Branch Technical Position on Concentration Averaging was released to the public for a 120-day public comment period yesterday. The BTP is being updated as part of ongoing NRC efforts to address unique waste streams such as blended radioactive waste in regulations. Major changes were made to the […]

The Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor this week announced it is seeking additional salt waste treatment capabilities as part of its efforts to empty high level waste tanks on site. Contractor Savannah River Remediation released an Expression of Interest Monday “to determine interest and qualifications for development, deployment, and potential operation of a supplemental […]

The Department of Energy is officially acknowledging that the Savannah River Site Salt Waste Processing Facility is set to breech its current project baseline, downgrading the project to “red” status—the lowest in its project management scale—in the latest version of the DOE Office of Engineering and Construction Management monthly project scorecard, released late last week. […]

The Department of Energy has decided to not extend Dale Knutson’s two-year agreement to serve as federal project director for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, and as a result, Knutson will be leaving the WTP to return to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at the end of May. Knutson’s planned departure from the Hanford vit […]

Bechtel National plans to cut another 200 to 300 positions at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant by the end of the year, with the initial round of notices for the new layoffs going out late this month. The layoffs are for non-manual workers, after Bechtel sent out layoff notices to 198 construction workers at the […]

Should the Department of Energy choose to again look beyond the current Federal Project Director ranks to fill the soon-to-be-vacant FPD slot at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Chief Operating Officer Jim Krupnick has emerged as a potential candidate, WC Monitor has learned. If Krupnick is chosen, he would replace Dale […]