Vol. 34, No. 24 Judge blocks $45B Hanford contract award; calls it ‘improper’
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Budget & Policy
DOE budget bill keeping EM at $8.3B, halting Justice40, heads to full Appropriations Committee
A House Appropriations subcommittee led by a lawmaker with a local interest in the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee on Thursday voted to keep nuclear cleanup spending roughly $8.3 billion in fiscal 2024, sending the measure onto the full committee. The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Chuck […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Hanford COVID suit ends with a whimper; ORNL case revived
One major COVID-19-related lawsuit in the Department of Energy’s weapons complex ended this week when an appeals court ruled there was nothing much to resolve while another, on the other side of the country, is restarting. A case involving DOE’s COVID-19 vaccination policy at the Hanford Site in Washington state is effectively over, a panel […]
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Interim Storage & Waste Disposal
Idaho County says DOE failed to assess impact of INL spent fuel storage
An Idaho county this week urged a federal judge to reject the federal governent’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the Department of Energy over ongoing use of the Idaho National Laboratory as a repository for spent nuclear fuel. Butte County, which says DOE should shoulder more of the social and economic impact of decades […]
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Transuranic Waste
WIPP, DOE hit in international cyberattack
The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico was among numerous federal entities that suffered a data breach Thursday as part of an international cyber hack involving the “”MOVEit” software. “Upon learning that records from two DOE entities were compromised in the global cyberattack on the file-sharing software MOVEit Transfer, DOE took […]
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Budget & Policy
House NDAA draft allows DNFSB budget of $47M; House appropriators say $45M
A House Appropriations panel wants to give the federal government’s independent safety watchdog for nuclear weapon sites almost as much money as the White House requested, bill published this week show. On Thursday, the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee chaired by Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn), passed a draft budget bill that would provide […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
New Mexico wants more monitoring, faster cleanup of lab’s chromium plume
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has not been aggressive enough in cleaning up a hexavalent chromium plume within the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the head of the New Mexico Environment Department said last week. DOE and its contractors “have denied New Mexicans and tribal members timely and effective clean-up of hexavalent chromium […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
North Wind CEO leaving by year’s end
Christopher Leichtweis, the president and CEO of Idaho Falls-based North Wind Group, plans to leave the company by the end of the year, the company announced Tuesday. Leichtweis, who has led the Department of Energy contractor since 2013, will remain on through Dec. 31, “to ensure a smooth and orderly transition,” North Wind said in […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Comments period could start this fall on Santa Susana DOE groundwater cleanup
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control could start taking public comments as early as this fall on groundwater cleanup for the Department of Energy’s area of the sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory, according to a report released Thursday. The California Agency on Thursday issued its long-awaited Final Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) for the 2,850-acre […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
Wrap Up:WCS faces 2024 permit renewal; experts study nuke war’s enviro impact; DOE awards $2M grant to Paducah chamber
Wrap Up:WCS faces 2024 permit renewal; experts study nuke war’s enviro impact; DOE awards $2M grant to Paducah chamber Waste Control Specialists, the commercial radioactive waste storage and disposal site in Andrews County, Texas, will be up for permit renewal later this year, a state regulator told Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit 2.0 last week in […]
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Commercial Low-Level Waste
Clarification
The story “EnergySolutions eyes state approval for DUF6 disposal in 2024,” [Weapons Complex Monitor Vol. 34 No. 23] should have reported the Utah Department of Environmental Quality has not scheduled a permit modification hearing yet for EnergySolutions.