Vol. 28, No. 21

Cleanup & Remediation

Proposed DOE EM Funding Increase Dwarfed by Cost of Taking Over NNSA Facilities

The $88 million top-line increase the Donald Trump administration proposed Tuesday for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2018 is two-and-a-half times less than the office would spend next year to start decontaminating disused nuclear-weapon facilities now owned by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The administration’s new budget plan, if […]
  • Cleanup & Remediation

    CH2M-led Team Gets 10-Year, $1.5B Paducah Deactivation Contract

    The Energy Department said Thursday it has awarded Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership — a CH2M-led team that also includes Fluor Corp. and BWX Technologies — a contract worth about $1.5 billion over 10 years, including options, to deactivate and remediate the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Paducah, Ky. DOE received four bids for the work, according […]

  • Transuranic Waste

    White House Proposes Terminating MOX — Again

    The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal sustains its predecessor’s plan to terminate the Department of Energy’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s $13.9 billion budget proposal includes $1.8 billion for the defense nuclear nonproliferation account, of which $279 million would go toward nonproliferation construction – a […]

  • Interim Storage & Waste Disposal

    Yucca Mountain Restart Would Begin With 83 Heads, $120M, at DOE

    The Donald Trump administration requested $150 million for 2018 across the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart DOE’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a nuclear waste repository. The $120 million of funding within DOE encompasses $110 million for Yucca licensing and $10 million for an interim storage […]

  • Cleanup & Remediation

    Hanford Budget Would Get a Shave in DOE Spending Plan

    The Department of Energy’s latest budget request would reduce spending at the Hanford Site in Washington state by $118.8 from current levels. The total budget would be $2.22 billion for fiscal 2018, not including security costs. The proposal would add about $5 million to the budget of Hanford’s Office of River Protection, for a total […]

  • Transuranic Waste

    Heinrich Says Trump Budget Doesn’t Have Enough Money for WIPP

    Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) this week told the head of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management that President Donald Trump did not propose a large enough 2018 budget for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). WIPP, the nation’s only deep-underground disposal facility for the radioactively contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste, would […]

  • Cleanup & Remediation

    SRS in Line to Receive $1.45B for Waste Cleanup, Other EM Missions

    The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is in line to receive $1.45 billion in fiscal 2018 for its environmental management (EM) mission, much of which would fund liquid waste cleanup, according to President Donald Trump’s budget proposal this week. The request is $111 million more than the South Carolina site received for EM work […]

  • High-Level & Tank Waste

    Hanford Tank Does Not Appear to be Leaking

    Radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s double-shell Tank AZ-101 does not appear to be from a leak within the tank, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. A leak was considered possible when a robotic crawler pulled out of the annulus, or space between the tank’s two shells, on May 18 was found to be contaminated […]

  • Cleanup & Remediation

    Mission Support Alliance Earns 91% of FY16 Award Fee

    The Department of Energy has rated the fiscal 2016 performance of Hanford Site support services provider Mission Support Alliance (MSA) as “very good.” The contractor earned 91 percent of the available fee, or a little more than $19.2 million. The fee included 94 percent of the maximum available for meeting milestones, or nearly $13 million, […]

  • Cleanup & Remediation

    GAO Asked to Review Maintenance of Hanford Facilities

    A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to review monitoring and maintenance of aging facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state after the May 9 discovery of a breached waste tunnel. “Fortunately, the collapse did not result in any injuries and no measureable release of […]

  • High-Level & Tank Waste

    Essential Waste Treatment Equipment at SRS Should be Fixed by Year’s End, Contractor Says

    The manager in charge of the effort to fix a Savannah River Site evaporator pot that unexpectedly sprung a leak halfway through its 30-year design life is 95-percent sure the vessel will be up and running again by Dec. 31. The 3H Evaporator Pot, which last year leaked some 3,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, is […]

  • Cleanup & Remediation

    SRS Security Advised to Take Action if Drones Present a Threat

    Savannah River Site security has been given direction to take appropriate action if a drone flying above the site presents a threat, an official at the South Carolina facility told a local advisory board on Monday. “Protocols are in place for engagement and I don’t really want to say anything else about that,” according to […]

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