Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

A story in last week’s issue of Weapons Complex Monitor (“Jacobs’ Profits Edge Up in Q1; Revenue Stable,” Vol. 32 No. 06) should have said that Jacobs’ profits increased in the first quarter of 2021 on both an adjusted and unadjusted basis. The story was also updated with the correct earnings figures for each period.

Randall Hendrickson is now the deputy chief of corporate services at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, according to the latest organizational chart dated Feb. 11. The job, which reports to the Environmental Management (EM) office’s associate principal deputy assistant secretary Dae Chung, was vacant as recently as Jan. 28, according to prior […]

Hanford contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company recently awarded Apollo Mechanical Contractors a $9.5 million contract for work on the site’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility.  Apollo’s job is to install equipment to transfer almost 2,000 capsules containing highly radioactive cesium and strontium from the water-filled Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF) pools to a planned […]

Cynthia Anderson, a veteran Department of Energy manager, is interested in leading the agency’s office of environmental management in the Joe Biden administration, multiple people told Weapons Complex Monitor. Among other roles, Anderson has served as chief operating officer for the Office of the Environmental Management, with more than 20 years of nuclear and environmental […]

Harsh winter weather this week in the Southwest and West scrambled work schedules at a couple of nuclear sites around the Department of Energy’s weapons complex. The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was closed on Tuesday due to snow and wintry weather and the federal complex also had a delayed opening on Wednesday, […]

President Joe Biden’s nomination of David Turk to be the deputy secretary of energy was formally sent to the Senate late Thursday and referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Senate was not in session Monday due to the Presidents Day holiday and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had not […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management selected Hendon, Va.-based SRS Critical Infrastructure Security as the winner of the new Security Services Contract, potentially worth $1 billion over 10 years, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. SRS Critical Infrastructure Security, or SCIS, is composed of Securitas CIS, K2 Solutions, Spectra Tech, Inc. […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management’s weekly total of confirmed active cases of COVID-19 dropped to 232 this week, down from 296 last week, a spokesperson said in a Thursday email. The confirmed number of cases for the week before that was 335. The Environmental Management (EM) office has seen its number of […]

The Department of Energy this week posted virtual site tour documents and other background material on its solicitation for a potential $614-million small business set-aside for the Moab Remedial Action Contract in Utah. The DOE Office of Environmental Management released its final request for proposals Feb. 11 for the work that includes cleanup of a […]

The Washington Department of Ecology is taking public comment through March 25 on proposed modifications to the state’s permit for key equipment used to help control liquid waste volume in underground tanks at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site. The original transfer lines that connect double-shell tanks holding radioactive waste to the 242-A Evaporator flunked […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 20 shipments of transuranic waste during January, which represents its highest monthly total since October, according to the facility’s online waste information database. There were 12 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory and eight from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. […]

As of Tuesday, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Department of Energy are still tinkering with a draft memorandum of understanding about sharing information at nuclear-weapon sites while a Donald Trump administration order limiting DOE interactions with the board remains in effect. That’s according to a spokesperson for the independent federal board, which […]

In addition to serving in key leadership posts for Republican presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, who died over the weekend at age 100, was also a top Bechtel executive in the 1970s and 1980s. Shultz first joined Bechtel in 1974 as executive vice president and “already had more experience and accomplishments […]

President Joe Biden plans to nominate David Turk as the deputy secretary of energy, according to a White House news release published this week. Turk, a member of Biden’s Department of Energy transition team, is currently deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), where he has worked since 2016 after leaving the Barack […]

The Department of Energy under the Joe Biden administration has decided, for now at least, to undo an organizational change made by the prior administration which had the Office of Environmental Management stovepiped below DOE’s undersecretary for science. The new organizational chart has the Office of Environmental Management (EM) reporting directly to the office of […]

The Energy Communities Alliance and local groups around the Hanford Site in Washington state claim a change in contracting policy by the Department of Energy could cripple some local subcontractors. In essence, the critics say DOE is ending many existing professional and support subcontracts at Hanford and encouraging the site’s new support services and central […]

The Department of Energy cleared a transition of Savannah River National Laboratory operations to Battelle Savannah River Alliance starting Feb. 16, the contractor announced Thursday. The notice means the Battelle team will take over as manager of the laboratory in mid-June from Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, which is the current operator of the entire […]

The Department of Energy Thursday issued its final solicitation for a potential $614-million small business set-aside contract for the Moab Remedial Action Contract which involves cleanup of a uranium tailings pile in Utah. The new business could run 15 years, with a 10-year ordering period plus an additional five-year task order, and would replace the […]

There were as of Thursday 296 active, confirmed cases of COVID-19 among personnel in the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, which is 39 fewer than the previous week’s total of 335. The figure, provided Thursday by an Environmental Management (EM) office spokesperson, marks several weeks of mostly steady decreases in the active cases […]

Jacobs Engineering, the Dallas-based parent of multiple nuclear-cleanup and nuclear-weapon site contractors, saw profits rise about $20 million in the first quarter of 2021, while revenue stayed flat, the company reported this week.  That accounts for adjustments related to the 2019 sale of the company’s Energy, Chemicals and Resources division to Australia’s Worley, and other […]

New Mexico will hold hearings soon about restarting excavation of a new utility shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, the Department of Energy’s manager for the transuranic waste disposal site told state lawmakers in a virtual briefing Tuesday. In addition, the facility should emplace more shipments of transuranic waste in the next […]

The Department of Energy expects to treat the remainder of transuranic waste, held in interim storage at Idaho National Laboratory by the end of year, a DOE official in Idaho said recently.  Of the 65,000 cubic meters of material shipped to Idaho from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado between 1970 and […]

The Department of Energy’s plans to kick off a public comment period next month on options for removing seven aging structures within the 200 West Area of the Hanford Site in Washington state. In a Monday announcement, DOE said these are “Tier 2” structures, meaning the facilities are chemically or radiologically contaminated due to Hanford’s […]

A standard box of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, stuck at a commercial site in Texas since 2014, has been approved for shipment to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. When that waste box is shipped there will be 74 remaining at Waste Control Specialists, Brian McGovern, […]

The New Mexico Environment Department expects the Department of Energy will start work this spring cleaning up contaminated land along DP Road, just outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a state spokeswoman said this week.  The DOE and legacy cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos submitted the preliminary screening plan on Dec. 21 to […]

The Department of Energy is about 85% finished shoring up the three sagging underground waste structures around the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site, a Department of Energy spokesperson at the former plutonium production site said late last week. “We have finished stabilizing the largest structure, the Z-9 crib, and the settling tank, Z-361,” […]

There are currently 335 active COVID-19 cases within the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex this week, a spokesperson said Thursday. The number, provided via email by a DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson, is 56 fewer than the prior week’s total of 391 active confirmed cases. It is also well below the 423 […]