Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

After the Energy Department picked a rival contractor for the major cleanup contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, Jacobs is anxiously awaiting a decision on a 10-year award for management of the facility’s radioactive tank waste. Jacobs subsidiary CH2M is the incumbent on the Hanford Central Plateau remediation project, but a Jacobs-led team […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Under pressure from the state of Texas, the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office has agreed to relocate drums containing potentially combustible radioactive transuranic waste stored since 2014 at the privately operated Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County. “We are going to work to disposition the legacy TRU waste from Los Alamos […]

There has been no apparent movement by the Trump administration over the last year to fill vacant and expired terms on the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB). The only change to the board in that time was the departure last May of another member, Linda Nozick, a civil and environmental engineering professor at […]

The Energy Department and contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation have finished taking down the main processing facility at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. With the building’s demolition, full removal of the Plutonium Finishing Plant should be finished this summer by the Jacobs subsidiary. Remaining work involves packaging and disposal of the rubble from the Plutonium […]

Interactions between processed high-level radioactive waste and stainless-steel containers could undermine long-term safe geologic disposal of the material, researchers at Ohio State University said in a study published this week. “The corrosion that is accelerated by the interface interaction between dissimilar materials could profoundly impact the service life of the nuclear waste packages, which, therefore, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has decided to use a cleanup facility in Ohio to help produce high-purity depleted uranium metal for nuclear weapons programs. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency will do that by installing a fourth process line at the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion facility at the Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

A new inspector general’s report bashed the human resources department at the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as ineffective, inefficient, and incapable of supporting the agency’s oversight of defense-nuclear sites. The board’s “human resources program is currently not designed and implemented to effectively support the execution of its mission,” reads a report issued this […]

Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B), the vendor in charge of legacy environmental remediation operations at the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico, won 84% of its potential fee for work done during fiscal 2019. Altogether, N3B took home more than $8.6 million of a potential amount exceeding $10.2 million, […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is establishing a new office to manage “all policy within the Department,” and appointing a new personal adviser for nuclear security, according to an all-hands memo dated Tuesday. To do this, Brouillette will rebrand the current Office of Policy (OP) as the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy (OSSP), which […]

Wide-ranging talks between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology on radioactive waste issues at the Hanford Site have apparently not progressed beyond the starting line. “The parties are still working through some preliminary arrangements,” Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury said in a Jan. 23 email. The agencies confirmed in October […]

Demolition of a Cold War-era legacy facility in December still leaves more than 1,100 facilities and buildings to tear down at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Specifically, 1,127 facilities have been identified for eventual demolition, SRS spokesman Monte Volk said via email. Those facilities encompass offices, power production plants, and […]

An article in the Jan. 24 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor should have stated the Savannah River National Laboratory has an annual budget of roughly $350 million.

The Government Accountability Office should by the end of April rule on challenges to $14 billion worth of Energy Department contract awards at the Hanford Site in Washington state. With the deadline now passed for additional challenges, the GAO has single protests on its docket for each award: the 10-year, $10-billion Hanford Central Plateau cleanup […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board wants to forge a closer working relationship with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. In a Jan. 10 letter to DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Chairwoman Jean Bahr urged “a framework for more regular interaction” between the two […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, the Energy Department’s cleanup contractor at the former gaseous diffusion plant in Pike County, Ohio, pocketed 86% of its potential fee for fiscal 2019, or $19.20 million of the available $22.78 million. The vendor claimed about $3.61 million of a potential $6.68 million in subjective fee for the federal budget year that ended […]

The Washington state Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday on a lower court’s $8.1 million award in 2017 to a former employee of Energy Department contractor Mission Support Alliance (MSA) at the Hanford Site. The support services vendor is asking Division III of the appeals court to reverse the award against it and former vice […]

While it does not say much about them publicly, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management watches potential mergers and acquisitions of its major contractors with more than passing interest, DOE’s top nuclear cleanup official said Thursday. As an example, Environmental Management wants to be sure the government contracting branches of heavyweights AECOM and Fluor […]

Los Alamos County, N.M., wants a federal review board to reverse a December decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying the county’s stormwater discharges contribute to pollution of the Rio Grande River. In a petition filed Jan. 17 with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, Los Alamos County seeks to overturn the Dec. 16 decision […]

Las Vegas-based Longenecker & Associates said in Tuesday it has hired a former Fluor supervisor as its manager for New Mexico projects. Lindsay Wallace started Monday and her role will include serving as Longenecker’s program manager for legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Longenecker has a subcontract with Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los […]

International engineering and construction provider AECOM appears poised to complete the $2.4 billion sale of its government contracting division to a joint venture of two New York investment firms, a company official said Tuesday. Eric Knox, AECOM vice president for strategic development for nuclear and environment, cited the impending change during a panel discussion at […]

The U.S. Energy Department still has to work out some murky issues that could result from establishing a stand-alone contract for management of the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. This includes specifics of how a new laboratory manager would work alongside the Fluor-led operator of the entire Savannah River Site, and how DOE’s […]

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control is “making every effort” to publish this summer the final versions of two long-awaited environmental reports for cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a spokesman said recently. The state agency oversees remediation of the 2,800-acre site in Ventura County, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, […]

A former employee of the liquid waste contractor for the U.S. Energy Department’s Savannah River Site has been awarded $240,107 in front pay she would have earned if the company had not unfairly denied her employment after she was initially laid off. In addition, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs ruled on Jan. 17 that […]

An article in the Jan. 17 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor should have reported that Centerra’s paramilitary security contract extension at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was scheduled to expire in February. The U.S. Energy Department can exercise two more four-month options to keep the vendor on the job into October.

The U.S. Energy Department’s request for proposals (RFP) for the Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning, and Removal contract has seemingly sparked significant interest from the contractor community. Vendors submitted 152 questions in response to the agency procurement for the potential 10-year, $3 billion award. The DOE Office of Environmental Management in December released the final request for […]

Passage of a law to reauthorize the U.S. Energy Department’s cleanup of the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state drew kudos Wednesday from participants at a local meeting. The measure, which passed the U.S. Senate on Dec. 2 and was subsequently signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 20, would reauthorize […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) hopes to meet soon with new U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette to discuss public health and safety issues at nuclear sites overseen by his agency. In a Jan. 16 letter, DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton congratulated Brouillette on his December confirmation as energy secretary and said the board would […]