Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

A “trace amount of plutonium” found inside a glove box at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on June 27 did not endanger any employees, a spokesman for the Department of Energy facility in New Mexico said Wednesday. Employees discovered an “unexpected powdery residue” underneath a brush in a material management room glove box at the […]

The Scioto Valley Local School District in Ohio plans a community meeting Saturday to discuss radioactive contamination concerns at a middle school located about 2 miles from the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site. Zahn’s Corner Middle School will be tested for radioactive byproducts released into the air by the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant during past uranium […]

An article in the July 26 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor, “Dueling Findings by DOE, University at Odds Over Safety of Ohio School,” should have said Energy Department dust samples taken during Memorial Day weekend detected no radioactivity above naturally occurring levels at a school near the Portsmouth Site.

The Department of Energy has delayed the release of its draft record of decision (ROD) for a planned 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee until the end of the month. The document had previously been anticipated today. The Energy Department postponed issuance after consulting with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and […]

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) anticipates sending at least two shipments of transuranic (TRU) waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. “We’re getting pretty close to when we’ll be able to send out that waste,” said […]

An unidentified U.S. Energy Department Office of Environmental Management nuclear facility needs to remedy shortcomings in its cybersecurity program, according to DOE’s Office of Inspector General. The Energy Department IG identified weaknesses in access controls, contingency planning, and continuous management, according to the memo dated July 19. The detailed report of the actual findings was not […]

Washington River Protection Solutions, the radioactive waste tank management contractor for the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, is seeking a subcontractor to fabricate three drop-deck trailers for moving vitrified waste. The solicitation for the firm-fixed-price subcontract was posted July 22 on the federal procurement website www.fbo.gov. Bids are due by 9 a.m. Pacific time […]

The AECOM-led contractor in charge of liquid waste management at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site earned $28.57 million of a potential $30.28 million for its latest fee period. That represents better than 94% of the possible fee, according to the DOE performance scorecard. During the period from June 1, 2018, through March 31 […]

The advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico wants New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) to renegotiate a 2016 consent order with the U.S. Department of Energy on cleanup of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The organization in June urged Grisham to have the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) revisit the deal reached with […]

Leidos Chairman and CEO Roger Krone predicted Tuesday the Energy Department could award a new contract for landlord services at the Hanford Site “within a couple of weeks.” There had been speculation it would be out this week, Krone said during the company’s quarterly earnings call, responding to a Wall Street analysts’ question on potential […]

The U.S. Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office on Wednesday awarded a trio of small-business contracts that together could be worth over $62 million. The largest of the deals, a potential $49.5 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract awarded to Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based BTP Services, is for technical support services throughout the Office of Environmental Management (EM) […]

“All options are on the table” at Fluor after the company’s $555 million loss in the second quarter of 2019, CEO Carlos Hernandez said Thursday. The government contractor is becoming more selective about what projects it bids on, and will consider asset sales and staff reductions, Hernandez said during a teleconference call with Wall Street […]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a budget caps deal that officially set defense funding toplines for the next two years, essentially doing away with future budget cuts via sequestration. H.R. 3877 sets the defense spending topline at $738 billion in fiscal 2020 and at $741.5 billion in fiscal 2021. The 2020 level is significantly […]

The Sheep Fire, which burned more than 112,000 acres, is the largest blaze ever at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday. It eclipsed the old record set by the Jefferson Fire, which in 2010 burned almost 109,000 acres, including 79,000 acres within the INL property, according to laboratory spokeswoman Sarah Neumann. […]

In a federal discrimination lawsuit seeking $3.5 million, an African-American woman formerly employed by the Savannah River Site’s security contractor says she was terminated for accidentally leaving her gun in a bathroom, while a white employee kept her job after making the same error. In the complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for South […]

An air tunnel at a degrading Savannah River Site nuclear materials processing facility should be able to withstand an earthquake, according to a detailed analysis for the Department of Energy, despite concerns raised two years ago by a federal safety board. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), management and operations contractor for the 310-square-mile DOE facility […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday opened a public comment period on a new finding that most Greater-Than-Class C (GTCC) low-level radioactive waste could be disposed of via near-surface facilities. Stakeholders have until Sept. 20 to submit comments on the draft regulatory basis issued last week by NRC staff, according to a filing in […]

Three industry sources said recently Fluor’s government services group, if not the entire company, could be an acquisition target for another player in the nuclear cleanup industry, Jacobs Engineering. Such a deal could further consolidate Jacobs’ hold on the business of environmental remediation for the U.S. Department of Energy, following its December 2017 purchase of […]

Conclusions drawn by Northern Arizona University (NAU) researchers and the Department of Energy provide opposing views of whether a middle school near the Portsmouth Site in Ohio is safe for students to attend this fall. Local officials, citing analysis by NAU, said Thursday dust samples taken over Memorial Day weekend at Zahn’s Corner Middle School […]

The Donald Trump administration could already be planning for a new permanent head for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. While Energy Department senior adviser William (Ike) White is apt to stay in charge of the Office of Environmental Management for a number months, names of potential successors to Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne […]

The Department of Energy on Monday issued a request for proposals for the next Nevada Environmental Program Services contract, which could be worth up to $350 million over 10 years. Navarro Research and Engineering holds the current $80 million contract, which began in March 2015 and runs through January 2020. The RFP for the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity […]

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology are taking public comments through Sept. 16 on a proposed change to the dangerous waste permit for the Hanford Site. If approved, the state permit modification would allow DOE to connect a backup waste transfer line from the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant’s […]

The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement on a 284-149 vote, a move that would allow the federal government to keep borrowing money. The new federal budget caps deal provides $2.5 billion more in base defense spending than the 2020 budget the House of Representatives has already approved. The […]

The Sheep Fire at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is contained enough to allow the emergency response to be scaled back, officials said Thursday afternoon. Firefighting crews will continue to keep an eye on the blaze there are no remaining hot spots, according to an update posted on the INL website. Fire officials expect […]

City officials from Oak Ridge, Tenn., want to meet with Energy Department representatives before the federal agency issues a draft record of decision in August for a new 2.2-million-cubic yard landfill planned for the Oak Ridge Site. City Manager Mark Watson made the request in a July 12 letter to Jay Mullis, manager of DOE’s […]

The Department of Energy is assessing potential vendor interest in processing, shipping, and disposing of radioactive waste from the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in New York state. In a request for information (RFI)/sources sought notice Wednesday, the DOE Office of Environmental Management requested capability statements from interested parties with the expertise to do the […]

Jacobs subsidiary CH2M appears prepared to resume the higher-risk work involved in demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to an Energy Department report. “Overall, changes and improvements necessary for safely resuming higher risk demolition work have been effectively established and implemented,” the department’s Office of Enterprise […]