Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Within 10 years, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management hopes to have its vitrification plant humming at the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 40% of the tanks closed at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and also be about done with legacy cleanup at the Moab Site in Utah as well […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office first rolled out its end state contracting model in 2018 and now wants to flesh out exactly how the program is supposed to work. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) tucked this nugget inside its Strategic Vision for 2021-2031. “In 2021, EM will implement a new End-State […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said Thursday spent nuclear fuel policy meetings are happening inside the Department of Energy but it is too early to spell out what the administration of President Joe Biden will pursue with Nevada’s stalled Yucca Mountain project off the table. Granholm’s remarks came in response to a reporter’s question at […]

After settlement talks failed to bridge the gap between Department of Energy contractor Leidos and subcontractor Professional Project Services, or Pro2Serve, the parties could be headed toward a federal court trial this summer on the smaller company’s claim it was wrongly cut out of the new landlord services team at the Hanford Site in Washington […]

More than a year after announcing its plans to keep incumbent cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT on the job at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the Department of Energy has executed a potential $690-million extension that could run until late March 2023. The final agreement, announced this week by the two partners, took effect March 29 and […]

It is time for the Department of Energy to focus on ensuring two aging facilities for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford Site in Washington state remain safe beyond the current 40-year design life, according to a recent DOE report. The agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments, in the report issued last month, […]

U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), whose district includes the Hanford Site, wants Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to continue a controversial policy change from the Donald Trump administration that declared certain radioactive waste now categorized as high-level may not need to go to a deep underground disposal site. In a March 30 letter to Granholm, […]

The lure of getting a piece of the potential $26.5-billion Hanford Integrated Tank Disposition Contract (ITDC) at the former plutonium production complex in Washington state attracted a crowd of nearly 90 tire-kickers to virtual meetings held last week by the Department of Energy. DOE spread out the meetings over three days, Tuesday through Thursday, to […]

James Biggins, who was already serving as acting general manager of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, now has the job on a permanent basis, according to a recent press release from the agency. Joel Spangenberg, the executive director of operations for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), said in the release Biggins was […]

More than 10 months ago the Department of Energy published its final solicitation for a new $6.4-billion Idaho Cleanup Project contract with a 10-year ordering period and industry sources are keeping watch. Bid proposals for the environmental work around the Idaho National Laboratory were due last July and the contract has not been awarded as […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site should finish construction there later this year of a new storage facility for drums of down-blended plutonium that will ultimately be certified as transuranic waste and sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Once the Aiken, S.C. site’s K Area storage facility, with […]

For the second year in a row, the Department of Energy plans to dip into an alternate source of revenue to shore up the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund used to remediate old gaseous diffusion plants. This is one of the highlights of a skinny version of the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2022 budget […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, which as of March 31 has confirmed 4,593 cases of COVID-19 among its federal and contractor workforce since the pandemic began, has no plans to order employees to take the vaccine. An Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson provided the cumulative figure and addressed the office’s approach to vaccinations […]

A former ventilation subcontractor’s lawsuit against Waste Isolation Pilot Plant prime Nuclear Waste Partnership was put on hold Wednesday while the parties attempted to settle their differences out of court. The prime, Nuclear Waste Partnership, and subcontractor Critical Applications Alliance have agreed to stay the case while pursuing mediation, their attorneys said in a joint […]

Don’t expect the Department of Energy to roll out its final solicitation for the potential $26.5-billion Integrated Tank Disposition Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state before August, officials said Tuesday during a virtual briefing for potential bidders. Hanford’s site manager, Brian Vance and many of his lieutenants at the DOE Office of Environmental […]

The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico has halted transuranic waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s contractor for the Los Alamos National Laboratory after sparks from a waste drum prompted evacuations at both the lab and the disposal site. That is according to a […]

About 18 months after the Department of Energy put up for sale 52 old railcars used to ship contaminated soil, Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions bought the equipment for $350,000. The 100-ton railcars, now located at Savannah River Site in South Carolina, were used in cleanup both there and at DOE’s Fernald Closure Project outside Cincinnati, […]

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it is justified in extending the current Swift & Staley landlord services agreement at the Paducah Site in Kentucky for up to six months while the Small Business Administration decides whether the company is too big to receive a follow-on contract for the work. The Small Business Administration (SBA) […]

The Department of Energy is meeting its commitment to keep the Idaho National Laboratory as the top-priority shipper to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico but still needs to get cracking on other directives from a 2019 update to the key legal settlement between Boise and the federal government, the state said. The […]

While the weekly infection numbers remain well below winter levels for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, agency officials are staying mum on when operations might return to something akin to pre-pandemic levels. “Given the current rates of COVID across the county, we have no timeline or projections on when sites will return to […]

Bosses at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., are shooting for a sharp uptick in monthly transuranic waste shipments to the underground salt mine after an ongoing maintenance outage wraps up in April, according to a recent update to a federal safety board. After seeing shipments drop to about four […]

The Department of Energy plans to retain an Atkins-led joint venture that runs depleted uranium conversion at former gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio and Kentucky for 14 more months, until March 31, 2023, in part to help a defense project stay on track. The DOE announced its intention to extend the contract for Mid-America Conversion […]

An affiliate of Idaho-based North Wind Group was picked by the Department of Energy from a field of eight firms to build a $50-million research center for nuclear cleanup at the University of South Carolina at Aiken, located about 20 miles from the Savannah River Site. Roughly six months after issuing a sources-sought for contractors, […]

Prospective bidders have until Monday, April 5, to submit questions to the Department of Energy on a potential five-year, $100-million small business contract for moving transuranic waste from nuclear cleanup sites around the country to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The DOE Office of Environmental Management has targeted May for publication of […]

The number of confirmed, active COVID-19 cases at Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites fell again this week to 137 —meanwhile a boss at one of the smaller remediation sites said certain indoor work will not resume there until local coronavirus stats improve.  The 137 cases at the Office of Environmental Management (EM) this week […]

Centrus Energy Corp. this month finished building all 16 of the AC100M gas centrifuges it plans to use to produce high-energy reactor fuel for the Department of Energy at the Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, under a $115 million DOE contract from 2019. That’s according to a press release from the Bethesda, Md.-based company, which […]

The Department of Energy is gathering information on firms interested in providing support services to the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee, an organization of 20 federally-recognized tribes touched by shipments of nuclear waste. The request for information notice was posted Tuesday on a federal procurement website by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy’s Office of Integrated […]