Vol. 32, No. 39 
Oak Ridge Cleanup Award Expected by New Year’s, DOE Says
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Cleanup & Remediation
DOE Guidance Calls for Inserting Vax Mandate into Site Contracts
Department of Energy contractor officers should by Friday, and unilaterally, if necessary, modify the agency’s existing major site contracts to include a COVID-19 mandate, according to long-awaited guidance published Wednesday by DOE. The directive applies to “Management and Operating (M&O) contracts, major site/facility contracts and onsite support service contracts,” the agency wrote in the guidance. […]
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National Laboratories
Hirees Will Outpace Retirees at Savannah River Lab This Decade; Site Security Still Undecided
Although about 30% of the 1,050-person workforce at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina can qualify for retirement over the next three years, the research facility will grow before 2030, a lab manager said at an industry conference in Knoxville, Tenn., this week. The lab, which largely focuses on technology […]
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Contracts & Procurement
Akima Protests North Wind Site Services Award at Portsmouth
Akima Intra-Data has protested the Department of Energy’s award of a potential five-year, $135-million contract last month to North Wind for Portsmouth Infrastructure Support Services in Ohio. The Akima bid protest filed with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Monday is scheduled to be decided by Jan. 12, according to a notice on the GAO website. […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Former Central Plateau Boss Leading Jacobs Transition in Idaho
Ty Blackford, who was CEO of the Jacobs subsidiary formerly in charge of cleanup at the Central Plateau of the Hanford Site in Washington state, is leading transition efforts for the Jacobs-led joint venture scheduled to take over remediation for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory by Jan. 1. That is according to a […]
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Decommissioning
Contractor Brings Down Last of DOE Buildings at Santa Susana’s ETEC Site
A contractor for the Department of Energy has finished tearing down the last of 18 buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif., the agency said this week. The last of the buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), Sodium Pump Test Facility, came down […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Washington Lawmakers Ask Biden to Drop Challenge to Hanford Law
More than 60 members of the Washington state legislature this week asked President Joe Biden to reconsider the Department of Justice’s challenge to an “overwhelmingly bipartisan state law to provide industrial insurance coverage to workers made sick” while doing cleanup work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In 2018 the legislature easily passed HB […]
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High-Level & Tank Waste
DOE Completes Startup Testing for Liquid Disposal at Waste Treatment Plant
Personnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site recently tested a drainage system that will funnel byproducts of liquid waste cleanup to an outbuilding from the Low Activity Waste Facility, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said this week. The system includes large tanks and miles of pipes inside the Low-Activity Waste Facility […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Portsmouth Advisory Board Scuttles October Meeting
The Department of Energy’s advisory board for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio postponed a meeting scheduled this week in Piketon, Ohio and planned to reschedule it, according to a statement from the administrative contractor for the board. A Monday email from EHI Consultants, on behalf of the advisory board cited two factors. First, “the high […]
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Budget & Policy
DOE’s Office of Inspector General to Tackle Many Issues in Fiscal 2022
The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General has a busy fiscal 2022 schedule of audits and inspections planned for projects affecting the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Last week, the DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its work plan for the fiscal year that began Oct. […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Plaintiffs Suing Portsmouth Contractors Seek Too Much Data Too Soon, Judge Holds
A federal judge nixed a fishing expedition for a big tranche of data sought by people who live near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site and who are trying to organize a class action lawsuit against eight current and former DOE contractors at the rural Ohio site. In a mid-September court filing,U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Wrap Up: Fires Put Out, Job Moves Across the Complex
The Southern Bench fire, which burned about 1,000 acres since late August, has been put out by firefighters from the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the operations contractor for the Nevada Site said this week. The Southern Bench wildland fire is now “fully contained and extinguished,” […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Correction:
A Sept. 24 article in Weapons Complex Monitor [“DNFSB Questions if Time Made Stranded Drums Safe for Travel”], should have identified a Sept. 8 letter to the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office as a letter requesting a report. The article relied upon an incorrect reference to the letter on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety […]