Vol. 28, No. 01 
UNLOCKED STORY: Shipments to WIPP Could Resume by May
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Budget & Policy
Former DOE Lawyer in Mix to Lead Environmental Management
The next head of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management could be a New York attorney who last served DOE in the Office of the General Counsel. Two sources this week said the incoming Donald Trump administration is considering Gary Lavine to head DOE’s $6-billion-a-year Cold War nuclear-cleanup program as assistant secretary for environmental […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Perry Gets Invite to Visit Hanford
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) has wasted no time in inviting President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary to visit the Hanford Site. Newhouse issued an invitation to former Texas governor Rick Perry in a letter Thursday. Perry, also a former two-time presidential candidate, famously forgot the Department of Energy during a 2011 debate as one […]
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High-Level & Tank Waste
Hanford Tank Farm Contractor Earns 77% of FY16 Award Fee
Hanford Site tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) received 77 percent of the award fee available for fiscal 2016, down from 88 percent for the previous budget year, according to a Department of Energy scorecard. “WRPS performed adequately through a turbulent year, but there were times when substantial ORP [DOE Office of River […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Costs Rise, State Fines Remain for Idaho Waste Treatment Unit
The Energy Department has to date spent about $785 million on its Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory, a DOE spokeswoman said, a tally that is more than $200 million over budget. The system’s budget was capped at $571 million in 2010, while a 2006 estimate had said the facility — designed […]
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High-Level & Tank Waste
DOE Reports Advances in Fixing Waste Treatment Plant Technical Issues
The Department of Energy said it has made significant progress in resolving technical issues that have slowed progress on construction of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012. DOE’s Office of River Protection has sent letters describing resolution of three of the eight technical issues to the agency headquarters, where they are being […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Fines Restart on MOX Deadline
South Carolina has hit the restart button on a multimillion-dollar fine over a missed plutonium disposition deadline at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS). A 2003 agreement between the state and DOE requires the federal government to process 1 metric ton of plutonium at SRS through the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
SRR Earns 94 Percent of FY16 Award Fee
The Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor earned 94 percent, $23.2 million out of a possible $24.6 million, of its performance award and incentive fees for fiscal 2016. On the recently released performance scorecard, the Department of Energy highlighted Savannah River Remediation’s (SRR) response in February to a leak in an evaporator pot, which slowed […]
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Vitrification & Grout
Savannah River Saltstone Disposal Unit Passes Leak Test
A waste disposal project at the Savannah River Site took another step forward recently when the facility’s liquid waste contractor conducted a successful leak tightness test for Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6). SDU 6 is the first 30-million gallon, megavolume salt waste disposal concrete unit constructed at the Department of Energy site in South […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
UCOR Gets 94 Percent of Award in Last 6 Months of FY16
URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) scooped up nearly all of its available award fee for cleanup operations at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee in the six months ended Sept. 30, according to the contractor’s latest award-fee scorecard. During the period just scored, UCOR earned some $3.4 million in fees, good for about 94 […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Moniz Highlights DOE Nuclear Cleanup, Nonproliferation Advances Under Obama
The Department of Energy made significant advances in cleaning up the legacy of its Cold War nuclear weapons operations during the eight years of the Obama administration, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Thursday in his Cabinet Exit Memo. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding “accelerated the cleanup of contaminated, often hazardous, legacy sites from the […]
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Transuranic Waste
LANL Confirms TWF Construction Complete
The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico has completed construction of its Transuranic Waste Facility (TWF) and the readiness process has begun, an individual familiar with the project said this week. The facility is expected to begin receiving waste by next spring or summer. The facility is intended for storage of newly generated […]
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Transuranic Waste
Carswell Takes No. 2 DOE Job at WIPP
Jeffrey Carswell has been promoted to deputy manager of the Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico, putting an end to talk that one of the leading figures in the agency’s years-long drive to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) was headed up the road to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Carswell — one […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Wrap Up: New DOE Whistleblower Rule Phases in Jan. 26
The Energy Department may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against whistleblowers within their ranks, under a new agency rule that goes into effect Jan. 26. The agency released a summary of the final rule late last year in the Federal Register. Senate Democrats from Washington state and Oregon, major stakeholders in the cleanup of the […]