Vol. 27, No. 36 CR Would Buy Congress Two Months to Solve EM Funding Clash
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Transuranic Waste
LANL Waste Stream That Plagued WIPP to be Treated By Summer 2017
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A tranche of the same kind of transuranic waste that leaked radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014 could be cleaned up and ready to ship out of the Los Alamos National Laboratory next summer, a Department of Energy official said here. There are still some 60 barrels of what […]
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Transuranic Waste
No Looming TRU Waste Storage Crunch, DOE Says
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Transuranic waste has been piling up around the Energy Department’s nuclear complex since the only disposal site for such material closed in 2014, and it will continue to pile up in relative safety for at least a little while longer, senior DOE officials said here Thursday. “We’re still looking at good space […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Wash. State Argues to Stay on Hanford Worker Safety Lawsuit
The Washington state Attorney General’s Office this week forcefully challenged the federal government’s request that a U.S. District Court dismiss the state lawsuit filed over worker safety at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In a motion filed in August, the Department of Justice said the state had no legal standing under the 1976 Resource […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
SRNS Settles Discrimination Lawsuit With Former Employee
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has settled a discrimination lawsuit filed against the contractor by a former employee who alleged she was denied a better job opportunity because she was Hispanic and the person who got the job was white. However, terms of the settlement were not released. Victoria Brandner sued SRNS, the Savannah River […]
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High-Level & Tank Waste
SRS Receipt Tank Begins Accepting Salt Waste
Salt waste processing at the Savannah River Site is expected to increase now that one of the Department of Energy facility’s new salt solution receipt tanks (SSRT) has begun receiving waste. Earlier this month, liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) began transferring decontaminated salt solution (DSS) to the tank, which can hold up to […]
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Contracts & Procurement
DUF6 Leads EM Contract-Awards Parade
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department will award hundreds of millions of dollars of work for continued operation of depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion (DUF6) plants at the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio later this month, a senior DOE procurement official said here Wednesday. “Somebody asked me yesterday if we’re going […]
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Non-Proliferation
Downblending of WIPP-Bound Plutonium Starting This Month
This month, the Energy Department will begin preparing some 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., the National Nuclear Security Administration said this week. Downblending will begin once the quasi-independent DOE agency completes an assessment of a recently completed two-month long […]
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Non-Proliferation
Moniz Insists MOX Project ‘Impossible,’ Stresses Less Costly Approach
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday offered strong support for a new plutonium dilution and disposal method in place of the mixed oxide fuel program that the Obama administration is pushing to cancel, calling the latter an essentially “impossible” effort. The controversy over the MOX program will be one of the next administration’s primary challenges […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Regalbuto Won’t Say if She’ll Stay at DOE
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With her customary caution and courtesy, the Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official would neither confirm nor deny that her career at the agency would end when President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Asked here at the 2016 National Cleanup Workshop whether she would consider staying at DOE’s Office of […]
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High-Level & Tank Waste
Wrap Up: Crucial WTP Permit Out for Comment Next Month
A permit that will allow Energy Department contractor Bechtel National to build a facility crucial to starting solidification of Cold War-era waste in Washington state by 2022 goes out for public comment next month, the state Ecology Department announced. “Ecology plans to start a 30-day public comment period in middle October on a proposed new […]