Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Huntington Ingalls Industries-led contractor in charge of legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico won roughly 82% of its total potential fee and 72% of its subjective fee in a recently-released scorecard from the Department of Energy.  Newport News Nuclear BWXT (N3B) Los Alamos took home $8.4 million out of […]

There are currently 473 active cases of COVID-19 within the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup complex as of close of business on Wednesday, which is up significantly from the past two weeks. The latest figure was provided in a Thursday email from a DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson. The tally represents a jump […]

For the second time in two years, the Department of Energy is looking at shipping certain radioactive waste, now classified as high-level, from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to a commercial disposal site out of state. The DOE said in a Wednesday press release it will issue a Federal Register notice within days […]

Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, the Jacobs-led cleanup contractor at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, earned 69% of its overall potential fee but less than half of its fee resulting from the Department of Energy’s subjective ratings during fiscal 2020. Meanwhile, Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services earned 87% of its potential fee for running the depleted uranium […]

In the wake of the Jan. 6 riot and takeover of the U.S. Capitol Building, and the public rancor which preceded it, several companies doing business in the Department of Energy weapons complex are reconsidering their approach to political donations. For example, Leidos Chairman and CEO Roger Krone announced Tuesday his company’s political action committee […]

The Government Accountability Office in separate reports this week said Congress should look for a disposal path for transuranic waste now at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York, and the Department of Energy must do a better job of monitoring contractors for potential fraud. As of February 2020, DOE reported spending about $3.1 […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. plans to restart an old ventilation fan soon and was recently criticized by the Department of Energy for poor oversight of a major infrastructure project, according to a recently released scorecard. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) also accepted fewer shipments in the pandemic-beleaguered 2020, taking in […]

With the Donald Trump administration coming to an end in less than a week, longtime cleanup hand Todd Shrader is expected to take over as acting head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management office until President-electric Joe Biden has his own people in place. An industry source on Monday said to expect […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management still has much work to do on its end state contracting model in order to truly drive nuclear cleanup projects toward completion, according to a National Academy of Sciences report released Monday. The Environmental Management (EM) office should set up results on intermediate end state milestones midway […]

Here’s some of the news Weapons Complex Monitor tracked over the last two weeks during the Exchange Monitor’s publishing break for the winter holidays. Navarro-led Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration this week began the process of taking over the Department of Energy’s 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Located in the 200-West […]

Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, took home almost $64 million or 98% of its total potential fee for work done over an 18-month period ending Sept. 30, 2020. The contractor was rated “very good” on its subjective fee as determined by […]

Time appears to have run out on the nomination of Matthew Moury to be a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. As of Jan. 3, the nomination to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) was officially returned by the Senate to President Donald Trump after the nomination never advanced to the full […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is reviewing a request by Waste Control Specialists to continue holding drums of potentially-combustible transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at its Andrews County, Texas facility into December 2022. About 110 containers of the problem waste from the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico have basically been […]

On Thursday, a day after violent supporters of President Donald Trump broke into the United States Capitol, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette called for condemnation of politically motivated violence, urged civil discourse in politics, supported a peaceful transition to the administration of President-elect Joe Biden and promised to stay on as energy secretary until inauguration […]

As of this morning, the Government Accountability Office website lists no bid protests filed yet for the Department of Energy’s Dec. 22 award of a potential 10-year, $3.8 billion Savannah River National Laboratory contract to a Battelle-owned team. Accounting for holidays and weekends, today marks 10 days since DOE announced the award. Losing bidders have […]

The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals has ruled the Department of Energy was wrong to disallow $16.6 million in costs incurred over several years by parent companies of Mission Support Alliance. In a ruling dated Dec. 17, the appeals board held the agreement between DOE and the Leidos-led infrastructure services contractor team at the […]

The Department of Energy and Bechtel announced Wednesday in an online ceremony that construction of facilities needed to start processing low-activity tank waste are complete at the $17-billion vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) facilities at the Waste Treatment Plant include a new Analytical Laboratory, the new […]

As of close of business Wednesday, nuclear cleanup sites managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management had 381 active cases of COVID-19 scattered across its workforce, a spokesperson for the office said this week. The figure, while still high, is down 50 from the 431 active cases cited on Dec.31. As for […]

Almost as soon as he graduated from Connecticut College — where he played basketball with the guy who’d go on to found Beyond Meat: the plant-based hamburger-ish patty — Mark Fallon started working for the Department of Energy. “I started my career at DOE,” Fallon told Weapons Complex Monitor. “I worked in the secretary’s office […]

Just before Christmas, and months after two losing teams protested the award, the Department of Energy canned a $13-billion liquid-waste cleanup contract awarded in May to a BWX Technologies-led team. It is the second time in two years that a BWXT-led team has seen DOE cancel a major procurement which it had originally won. In […]

As part of the omnibus spending package signed Dec. 27 by President Donald Trump, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will receive almost $7.6 billion for fiscal 2021, which is $131 million above its funding level for the 2020 budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2020. It is also about 22% more than […]

In a long-awaited report published this week, the Department of Energy estimated it could save up to $230 billion by lowering the classification level of certain radioactive waste from nuclear-weapons production — and while some neighbors of nuclear-cleanup sites welcomed the idea, it remained far from certain that Congress will give the agency clear legal […]

At deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor, Congress was still debating an extension of federal budgets beyond midnight on Friday, when a continuing resolution that extended 2020 budgets through today was set to expire.

Cold War and Manhattan Project locations being cleaned up by the Department of Energy could be viable candidates for new nuclear power plants, a federal official said during an online presentation Wednesday. About a dozen of the 16 nuclear cleanup properties run by the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) boast “unique characteristics” potentially attractive […]

A group led by Navarro Research and Engineering is expected to start its transition Jan. 4 as the new contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a source said this week. Hanford’s DOE site manager, Brian Vance, said last week during an appearance before the Hanford Advisory Board to expect the […]

The Department of Energy’s manager for the Hanford Site in Washington state expects the stabilization of three crumbling underground waste structures near the Plutonium Finishing Plant to be shored up by the end of January. “We expect to complete that project by the end of January,” Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance told a meeting of […]

While the coronavirus pandemic affected nuclear cleanup at the Department of Energy in ways great and small, it did not slow down the acquisition process in 2020, when the Environmental Management Office awarded about $31 billion worth of new cleanup contracts. That includes $17 billion of contracts during the 2020 calendar year and some $14 […]

The New Mexico Environment Department is still waiting on the Department of Energy to provide more details on the planned remediation of contamination discovered earlier this year on a public road outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The preliminary screening plan that will determine if the hazardous constituents at the 28-acre DP Road site are […]