Vol. 27, No. 38 DOE Legacy Cleanup Gets Two More Months of 2016 Funding
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Contracts & Procurement
Big SRS Liquid Waste Follow-On Draws Three Bidders
AECOM, BWX Technologies, and Fluor Corp. all bid on a 10-year liquid waste management contract at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., that could be worth $4 billion to $6 billion, sources told Weapons Complex Monitor. The Energy Department would not authorize anyone to comment on the record for this story. […]
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Contracts & Procurement
Atkins-Led Team Gets Five-Year, $318M DUF6 Conversion Contract
An Atkins-led joint venture beat out four competing bids for a five-year, $318 million Energy Department contract to operate depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities at DOE’s former gaseous diffusion plants near Paducah, Ky., and Piketon, Ohio. Atkins partnered with Fluor Corp. and Westinghouse to form Mid-America Conversion Services. The companies announced their winning bid […]
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Non-Proliferation
Energy Department Rips MOX Contractor’s Construction Estimates
CB&I AREVA MOX Services provided “misleading” information in determining how much construction of the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) will cost, and how long it will take to build the plant, according to an updated project baseline report released Sept. 23 by the Energy Department’s Office of Project Management Oversight and […]
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Transuranic Waste
SRS Transuranic Waste Will Wait Until At Least March for WIPP Trip
Transuranic waste from the Savannah River Site (SRS) will not be certified for shipment to New Mexico for permanent disposal until at least March, the top Department of Energy official at the South Carolina facility told a citizens group this week. Earlier this year, DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office released stricter new standards for packaging and […]
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Non-Proliferation
SRS Starts Downblending 6 MT of Plutonium
The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site said Friday it has begun downblending 6 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The milestone follows DOE’s announcement on April 5 that it would downblend the material and send it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for disposal. The process of blending plutonium oxide […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Whitney Leaving EM for AECOM
Only days after news of his departure from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management leaked, Mark Whitney, the agency’s No. 2 nuclear-cleanup official, has joined AECOM, the Los Angeles-based DOE contractor announced. Whitney “has been appointed chief operating officer of AECOM’s nuclear and environment strategic business unit,” AECOM wrote in the press release. The company […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Idaho to Fine DOE Over Blown Sodium Waste Deadline
The state of Idaho will fine the Energy Department up to $3,600 daily after today, when as of the stroke of midnight DOE will officially have blown a deadline to start treating almost 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. This waste was to be processed by the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU): a so-called steam reformer […]
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Budget & Policy
New Senate Bill Would Beef Up Whistleblower Protection at DOE
Three Democratic U.S. senators who have pushed the Energy Department to reform its whistleblower policies will introduce a bill that would expand and tighten whistleblower protection for agency and contractor personnel. Sponsored by Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and titled “Department of Energy Whistleblower Accountability Act,” the bill would […]
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Transuranic Waste
DOE, Contractor Mum on Crucial WIPP Restart Milestone Scheduled for This Week
It was not clear this week whether Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership began a scheduled operational readiness review that is a critical choke point for reopening the nation’s only disposal facility for the radioactively contaminated material known as transuranic waste. Bill Taylor and Tim Runyon, spokesmen for the Department of […]
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High-Level & Tank Waste
Savannah River Remediation Discloses Small Slip for SDU 6
A 30-million-gallon reservoir for decontaminated salt waste at the Savannah River Site will be ready about seven months later than expected, but still much sooner than the Energy Department is expected to need it, a project manager with the site’s liquid waste contractor said Monday. The massive tank will be ready in May 2017, Jon […]