Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The AECOM-led contractor in charge of environmental remediation at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is in the early stages of dealing with soil near the old K-25 building with a higher-than-expected contamination level. On June 13, URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) determined soil samples from a legacy soil contamination area near the old […]

The New Mexico Court of Appeals expects a status report by July 31 on mediation between the parties in litigation over changes to the way the Department of Energy calculates the underground volume of transuranic material at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad. The mediation began last month between representatives of DOE, the […]

The New Mexico Environment Department will kick off the first in a series of public outreach meetings a week from today with a discussion of its oversight of the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The July 9 meeting will focus on the mission of the state agency’s Energy Department Oversight Bureau, and possible […]

The Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky temporarily lost all power Sunday following a storm in the region. In an occurrence report published Wednesday, DOE said “the Paducah Site experienced a total loss of site power as a result of the severe weather affecting the Shawnee-Marshall 161kV Line that feeds power to the Paducah […]

In observance of the Independence Day holiday, the next Weapons Complex Monitor will be published on Wednesday, July 3.

Parsons has provided quality management at the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), with little need for improvement, according to a recent assessment from the U.S. Department of Energy. Agency officials further concluded the contractor has successfully implemented processes and procedures that fall in line with DOE’s Conduct of Operations for facilities in […]

The U.S. Department of Justice said this week a federal court in Washington state should reject a motion to dismiss a fraud lawsuit brought filed against a contractor and subcontractor at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site. In an 86-page document filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, the Justice Department […]

Contractors at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state have won praise, for the third year in a row, for their efforts to limit the environmental impact of their computers and other electronic equipment. In 2018, over 95% of the electronics bought by all DOE contractors at Hanford were environmentally friendly, according to […]

The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) this month formally determined that the site of the now-decommissioned Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) can be released for unrestricted use. Contractor EnergySolutions completed decommissioning the facility in April. While the University of Arkansas owns the reactor site, the work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. […]

The Department of Energy is accepting claims through Sept. 13 for reimbursement of expenses for cleanup of certain uranium and thorium processing sites in the current 2019 federal fiscal year. The agency said in a Federal Register notice Tuesday that its Office of Environmental Management requested just over $21 million in fiscal 2020 for the […]

The Department of Energy has extended three technical support services contracts through Sept. 30 for cleanup operations at its Paducah Site in Kentucky and Portsmouth Site in Ohio. Further details about the contract extensions were not immediately available. The department has indicated it could extend the contracts in three-month increments from April 1 to Dec. […]

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday committed to explaining the missed 2017 deadline to complete environmental remediation at his agency’s portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California. The Energy Department is one of three parties, with Boeing and NASA, responsible for cleanup of the former 2,850-acre rocket testing and nuclear research complex […]

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) wants to give state governors a firm voice in the Department of Energy’s reinterpretation of the federal definition of high-level radioactive waste (HLW). In an amendment submitted to the House’s version of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Smith proposed prohibiting any DOE funding in the upcoming federal budget […]

Mission Support Alliance (MSA), the support services provider for the Hanford Site in Washington state, has dropped a contract dispute complaint against the Department of Energy. The chair of the U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals on June 19 dismissed MSA’s case against the Energy Department with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled at a […]

The legacy nuclear cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico this week canceled the procurement for removal of concrete slabs and related work in Technical Area 21. In an update to its April contracting notice, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) said Monday it was terminating the procurement […]

One of the Department of Energy’s major contractors has sealed a cooperative agreement with a young California company that is offering a “drillhole” approach for disposal of nuclear waste. Under the memorandum of agreement announced Monday, Bechtel will offer project management, business, and other support to assist Deep Isolation in selling its technology to the […]

The Department of Energy is requiring over a dozen of its cleanup sites to conduct extensive evaluations of their radioactive waste holdings and safety practices, in hopes of preventing a repeat of the April 2018 sludge release at the Idaho National Laboratory. The facilities overseen by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) have until Sept. […]

A defense policy bill unveiled last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee would require the Department of Energy to report to Congress on its progress in closing radioactive waste storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Idaho National Laboratory. The committee is also looking for a report from the […]

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed its first fiscal 2020 appropriations bill without any discussion of or changes to its $7.2 billion spending proposal for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. After several days of debate, House members voted 226-203 in favor of a “minibus” appropriations bill that would fund the Energy Department, […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico received 115 shipments of transuranic defense waste during the first five months of 2019. Based on 21.5 calendar weeks through May 31, that is an average of 5.4 shipments per week. By contrast, the facility received 138 shipments for the first five months of […]

The White House wants federal agencies including the Department of Energy to kill off some of their Federal Advisory Committees by September, according to a presidential order published June 14. Federal Advisory Committees are nominally independent, government-chartered groups that provide advice to U.S. agencies. Either the president or Congress can require an agency to create […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee is eyeing a drastic overhaul at the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), including limiting its members to a single consecutive term and bringing on an executive director to improve management. The measures, contained in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act approved by the committee in May and […]

The Department of Energy proposes to pay for five environmental projects valued at just over $1 million to work off some of the penalties assessed by the state of Idaho over the agency’s failure to start treating sodium-bearing waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. The rest of the $2.19 million penalty incurred for the 12 […]

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said this week he has been unable to persuade the White House to take a direct interest in addressing findings of off-site radiological contamination near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth cleanup project in his state. “I’ve begged the Department of Energy and I tried to get the president of the United […]

AECOM plans next year to spin off the business that contracts with the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense into a separate publicly traded company. The Los Angeles-based infrastructure multinational said Monday its Board of Directors unanimously signed off on the separation, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2020. The […]

It will take at least three months longer than expected for a new salt waste treatment method at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site to complete a demonstration period that began in January. That is because the method, known as tank closure cesium removal (TCCR), has had difficulties dissolving the salt waste, a DOE […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has set the new date for a public hearing on two radioactive waste drum accidents in the Energy Department weapons complex. The hearing, originally set for last month, is now scheduled for noon to 4 p.m. Thursday, June 20, at DNFSB headquarters in Washington D.C. The hearing was […]