Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Columbia, S.C.-based Energy Department subcontractor AVANTech recently hired Mark Ping as its senior vice president of business development for utility services. Ping’s nuclear career spans more than 35 years and includes experience in radioactive water treatment, wet waste processing, and disposal, the company said in a Feb. 19 press release. The company is a provider […]

The Department of Energy does not know yet what action it will take on its proposed reinterpretation of the definition of high-level radioactive waste (HLW), Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said last week. “We don’t have a real distinct schedule on that. Again, we are trying to take our time and be deliberative,” […]

The Donald Trump administration has proposed a $6.5 billion budget for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2020, slightly less than the $6.6 billion requested last year but 11 percent below the $7.2 billion eventually enacted by Congress. The office’s funding for the budget year that began Oct. 1 is its largest […]

The Energy Department and its contractors expect demolition of the X-326 Process Building at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio to begin in July 2020, federal managers said March 7 at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz. Most deactivation work has been completed at the building built in the 1950s to enrich uranium, first for […]

Prospective contractors have peppered the Energy Department with questions about two requests for proposals issued in February for the Hanford Site in Washington state. The DOE Office of Environmental Management recently posted 75 questions raised by the contractor community about the potential 10-year, $13 billion Tank Closure Contract. The cleanup office posted another 28 questions […]

Operations resumed Thursday at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico after more than a day of high winds that knocked out power and stranded some workers in an elevator for about three hours. The Carlsbad Current-Argus reported Wednesday that 36 miners were stuck in an elevator from roughly 7 p.m. to […]

The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) is talking with officials in Washington state about long-term plans for resuming shipments of transuranic waste from the Hanford Site to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. It has been eight years since DOE sent waste from the former plutonium production complex to the underground […]

The former management and operations contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico failed to fully overcome setbacks in development of a new radioactive waste facility at the site, according to the Energy Department. In a March 1 report, DOE’s Office of Inspector General cited problems Los Alamos National Security faced with an […]

Local community leaders are urging the Washington state Department of Ecology to expedite completing an environmental impact statement (EIS) and a revised permit for Perma-Fix Northwest in Richland, Wash., near the Hanford Site. The Department of Ecology said at a public meeting Wednesday in Richland on the scope of the EIS that the permit application […]

The U.S. Department of Justice has detailed its complaints about a new Washington state law that makes it easier for Hanford Site personnel to have their workers’ compensation claims approved. The Justice Department filed a motion for summary judgment late on March 1 in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington state, asking that the court […]

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in recent weeks approved the final design for a new On-Site Disposal Cell at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The Department of Energy received the approval within the past month or so, Joel Bradburne, deputy manager for DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office, said Thursday on the sidelines of the Waste Management […]

The Energy Department on Wednesday issued a final request for proposals for a potential $1 billion, 10-year paramilitary security services contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The current $990 million contract, held by Centerra-SRS, started in October 2009 and runs through Oct. 7. The latest DOE procurement schedule says the department could […]

PHOENIX, Ariz. – While the Department of Energy and its nuclear cleanup contractors acknowledge they are learning on the job, both sides Wednesday stressed the urgency of meeting deadlines for the first set of solicitations issued under the agency’s overhauled approach to procurement. Requests for proposals are due March 18 for two potential 10-year, multibillion-dollar […]

Operations at a key Savannah River Site waste facility are expected to increase later this year, in unison with the startup of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. Staffing increases are also expected at the SRS Saltstone Production Facility, which mixes treated salt waste with a cement […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management should focus more on “breakthrough technologies” in nuclear cleanup operations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said this week. Such technologies could cut the time needed for environmental remediation jobs, the National Academies said in a report Monday. The DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) […]

Registration opens at 9 a.m. March 19 for all of the Department of Energy’s 2019 environmental cleanup tours of the Hanford Site in Washington state. Twenty tours will be offered this year, with all bus seats expected to be claimed in a matter of hours. Registration is only available via the Hanford.gov website. However, a […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office should reconsider what work is deemed “operations” as opposed to “capital asset projects,” the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday. Some operations, such as treatment and storage of radioactive liquid tank waste, should be subject to the higher degree of scrutiny applied to capital projects, the government watchdog said. […]

Department of Energy contractor Fluor Idaho intends in April to resume sludge repackaging at an Idaho National Laboratory fabric filter building where four drums of radioactive waste overheated and ejected their lids about one year earlier. The company informed the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality of its plans on Feb. 28 in a monthly report […]

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said this week she wishes her office had moved sooner to cancel the procurement for a decade-long liquid waste management contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. As with many government decisions, this one “could have been more timely,” White said in […]

While it has taken initial steps, the U.S. Department of Energy is not collecting the information it needs to attack its $377 billion in environmental liability, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Wednesday. Liabilities at the Energy Department, including those of the Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, are examined […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) last month promoted Betsy Connell to associate principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Regulatory and Policy Affairs, deleting the “acting” from her title. Connell has been running the office on an interim basis since November. She took over for Mark Gilbertson, who became principal deputy […]

Retirees of former Hanford Site contractor Lockheed Martin Services Inc. have petitioned the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to hear their appeal of a U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision in a class action lawsuit against the Department of Energy. In early February, a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld […]

The U.S. Department of Energy could do a better job of monitoring how its contractors spend billions of dollars in federal money, the Government Accountability Office said Tuesday. A new GAO report recommends DOE entities, including the Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, put more emphasis on how management and […]

The Department of Energy on Tuesday formally canceled the liquid waste management procurement for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, citing “significant changes” to requirements at the facility and its own acquisition strategy. That is the crux of a one-page letter sent to the three bidders on what could have amounted to a decade-long […]

The latest procurement schedule from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management indicates draft requests for proposals for major work at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York could be issued this spring. A draft RFP for a new Idaho Cleanup Project contract could go out this […]

A Department of Energy official acknowledged on Feb. 21 that the Idaho National Laboratory missed its Dec. 31, 2018, deadline to move defense-related transuranic waste to the federal disposal facility in New Mexico. Under a 1995 settlement between DOE, Idaho, and the U.S. Navy over in-state nuclear waste storage, the Energy Department was supposed to […]

Department of Energy contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley (CHBWV) has removed virtually all the waste generated from demolition of the vitrification plant at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state. About 460 containers of debris have been sent from the site at the town of Ashford to off-site facilities, the Energy Department […]

Todd Wright, who retired last August as vice president and general manager of AECOM’s Aiken, S.C.-based nuclear and environment business, has received South Carolina’s highest civilian award. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) formally inducted Wright into the Order of the Palmetto during a ceremony in the governor’s office last week. The award is given […]