Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Energy Secretary Rick Perry suggested Tuesday he is ready to again suspend his agency’s past practice of bartering excess government uranium to help pay for environmental remediation at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. “I agree with you,” Perry told Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a vocal opponent of the practice, during a Senate Energy and Natural […]

The Energy Department and the state of Idaho have yet to discuss potential shipments of transuranic waste from the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in New York state to the Idaho National Laboratory during fiscal 2020 and 2021. The fiscal 2020 budget justification for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management envisions sending 24 containers filled with […]

The Department of Energy on Monday issued preliminary notices of violation to CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. over repeated incidents of radiological contamination spread at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Radioactive particles were found outside the established radiological control boundary of the Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition site in 2017 and 2018. The Energy Department […]

The $6.5 billion fiscal 2020 budget request for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would resume the practice of “bartering” excess government uranium in order to defray cleanup costs at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, helped win […]

The Savannah River Site would receive nearly $798 million for liquid tank waste treatment under the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2020 budget request – an uptick of more than $100 million from the current federal budget year. Most other missions under the South Carolina facility’s Environmental Management (EM) program would also get a boost if […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has given its blessing for Waste Control Specialists (WCS) to continue storing transuranic waste from the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory through late December 2020. The commission on March 20 issued an amendment to Waste Control Specialists’ state radioactive materials license allowing it to retain the potentially […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says the Energy Department should do more to reduce the risk of combustion of stored radioactive waste sludge similar to the April 2018 accident at the Idaho National Laboratory in which four drums blew off their lids. In a March 12 letter, the DNFSB asked Energy Secretary Rick […]

The Department of Energy could levy up to $33 million in disincentive fees against Parsons Government Services for the contractor’s failure to control costs and meet deadlines at the Savannah River Site’s $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), the agency said this month. Parsons is pushing back, saying the agency is not acting in […]

The state of Washington on March 22 asked a federal judge to rule in its favor without going to trial in the Hanford Site workers’ compensation lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice in December. The Justice Department sued the state in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington, saying a new state law that increases […]

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has rejected a petition to rehear a case asking that full pension benefits be reinstated for up to 500 people who worked at the Hanford Site in Washington state. It issued the denial Tuesday without comment. Retirees of Lockheed Martin Services Inc. in February petitioned […]

Funding for a key environmental remediation infrastructure project at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee would be sliced by $27 million in the Department of Energy’s budget plan for fiscal 2020. The DOE Office of Environmental Management request at Oak Ridge would decrease by $217 million from the fiscal 2019 level, from $646 million to […]

The Department of Energy plans in fiscal 2020 to cut funding for cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state in part because of progress made and projects completed, according to detailed budget documents released Monday. In total, funding for the two DOE offices at Hanford would drop by more than $400 million from current […]

Centrus Energy on Thursday reported a decline in revenue for both the fourth quarter of 2018 and the year in whole. The Bethesda, Md.-based nuclear fuel provider reported revenue of about $84 million for the quarter ended Dec. 31, and $193 million for 2018, down respectively from $117 million and $218 million for the corresponding […]

A senior U.S. Army official on Wednesday struggled to explain the reasoning for the Trump administration’s plan to return management of a nuclear cleanup program from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy. “I really think that DOE wanted that program back, and I can’t answer why on that,” R.D. James, assistant […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received its first shipment of defense transuranic waste 20 years ago this week. The Energy Department, WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership, and officials in southeastern New Mexico plan various activities in March and April to mark the 20th anniversary of the inaugural shipment, which […]

The Department Energy’s Office of Environmental Management retained a firm to audit proposals for the potential 10-year, $13 billion Tank Closure Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state. A contract valued at about $415,000 was awarded to Maryland-based CohnReznick, which has done fee-reasonableness audits for DOE in the past. The contract for the proposal […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology has denied the Department of Energy’s application for a permit to cover Test Bed Initiative (TBI) work at the Hanford Site, but expressed support for the project. Despite the initial setback, the letter of denial issued March 15 also said there is a better and possibly quicker way for […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry will testify before the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee next week on his agency’s fiscal 2020 budget request. Perry is the only witness scheduled to appear before the panel at 10 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday at Rayburn House Office Building Room 2362-B in Washington, D.C. The subcommittee is led […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend the contract for Mission Support Alliance (MSA) to provide site-wide services at the Hanford Site in Eastern Washington by up to six months. Hanford DOE Manager Brian Vance said in a memo to site employees Tuesday that Richland Operations Office Deputy Manager Joe Franco was notifying MSA that […]

The Department of Energy is requesting more than $900 million for liquid waste treatment at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the largest chunk of a $2.67 billion proposal for all facility operations in fiscal 2020. That sum is the most in the DOE complex for nuclear cleanup sites. It is about $42 million more than what Savannah River is […]

The legacy cleanup vendor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has awarded a subcontract for a company to tear down an old processing building for radioactive liquid waste and do certain other work at Technical Area 21. Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) said Thursday the contract went to Albuquerque-based […]

A number of nuclear cleanup sites would make due with less money under the Department of Energy budget plan for the next fiscal year. On March 11, the agency rolled out the broad outlines of its fiscal 2020 budget, with nearly $6.5 billion planned for the Office of Environmental Management — down by over $700 […]

The Department of Energy indicated Monday it intends in the upcoming budget year to cut tens of millions of dollars from environmental remediation funding at some of its national laboratories. As part of the continuing rollout of the Trump administration budget plan for fiscal 2020, the Energy Department released preliminary funding tables for its laboratories. […]

Anyone visiting the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) these days should not count on finding a cheap hotel room around Carlsbad, N.M. Rooms are scarce and midweek rates can run from $148 per night at the Super 8, to $289 at the Days Inn, to $409 at the La Quinta Inns and Suites, […]

The Trump administration is proposing to shift management of cleanup of more than 20 radioactively contaminated former nuclear sites from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers back to the Department of Energy. The Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) would be placed into the portfolio of DOE’s Office of Legacy Management, accounting for nearly all […]

Demolition preparations have resumed at the X-333 Process Building at the Department of Energy’s shuttered Portsmouth Site in Ohio after a piece of old uranium-enrichment equipment caught fire there last week, an agency spokesperson confirmed Wednesday. The fire ignited at about 10:30 p.m. on March 14, after personnel with site cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth cut […]

Idaho state regulators are reviewing documents drafted by Fluor Idaho, which the company hopes will allow resumption of sludge repackaging this spring at the Idaho National Laboratory facility where four waste drums overheated and ejected their lids last April. The “corrective action plan” and “evaluation of the safety of the situation” reports are being discussed […]

Daniel Santos last week resigned from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) after a little more than four years on the job, the independent nuclear health-and-safety watchdog confirmed Monday. A spokesperson for the DNFSB said Santos’ last day will be March 29. The board had previously announced on its website, without naming names, that one […]