Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The need to develop and win regulatory approval for new “oversized boxes” to move radioactive waste to the Idaho National Laboratory was central to the Energy Department’s decision against keeping the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) open past this year. After considering sustaining operations at the facility open after it finishes its mission to […]

The Hanford Site’s occupational medicine contractor has been awarded 90.1 percent of the fee available for the last full fiscal year under its expiring contract. HPM Corp. (HPMC), of Kennewick, Wash., earned $315,350 of $350,000 available for fiscal 2018, according to a Department of Energy performance scorecard released Wednesday. HPM Corp. was awarded a six-year […]

The Department of Energy needs to be more realistic in tracking and reporting progress toward environmental milestones at its nuclear cleanup sites, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Thursday. “We found that DOE didn’t accurately track or report whether milestones were met, missed, or postponed. We also found that sites continually renegotiate milestones they are […]

ARLINGTON, Va. — The head of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) hazarded an educated guess here Wednesday that the Department of Energy will soon extend his team’s contract to manage the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. After a one-year, $1-billion extension awarded in 2018 by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, SRNS is slated to […]

The state of New York plans to accept public input later this year on a draft permit for the U.S. Department of Energy to keep transuranic waste up to 10 years at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) cleanup site in Schenectady County. After the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) last year decided the […]

A motorist who died in an automobile crash inside the Savannah River Site in South Carolina on Feb. 7 was not an employee of the Department of Energy or its contractors. “It wasn’t connected to our work,” a DOE spokesperson said by email. “It does appear that it was just a tragic accident — one […]

Fewer workers than Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth (FBP) hoped took advantage of a voluntary separation package offered for contractor personnel at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. After offering the package in December for up to 75 employees at the former gaseous diffusion plant, the decommissioning vendor said this week less than two-thirds of that number […]

The Energy Department and its contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) are seeking to preserve their recently won change to the way in which transuranic waste volume is recorded at the New Mexico disposal facility. Both DOE and AECOM-led Nuclear Waste Partnership have been authorized to intervene in the legal challenge brought last […]

The waiting game for re-award of a multibillion-dollar contract for liquid waste management at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina might be over soon, an AECOM executive said Tuesday. “We expect the Savannah River Site to be awarded any day now,” Chief Operating Officer Randall Wotring said during the company’s quarterly […]

The Government Accountability Office says there is an opportunity for the Department of Energy to balance the cost and risks posed by 149 single-shell tanks containing radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. A section a Jan. 29 GAO report, on growing liability costs for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, said the agency […]

The state of Idaho has fined the Energy Department more than $5.3 million for failure to begin operating the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory. The $5.3 million figure represents the total penalties as of Jan. 19, Natalie Creed, hazardous waste unit manager at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), […]

Two Tennessee-based firms, RSI Entech and Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve), appear set to keep their technical support business for the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) through the end of the year. Meanwhile, a source said Thursday the Energy Department appears to be moving ahead with plans for a consolidated technical and administrative support […]

Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering brought in $3.1 billion in revenue during the quarter ended Dec. 31, 73 percent higher than the $1.8 billion reported for the same period one year earlier Jacobs, which has a wide footprint in the Energy Department nuclear cleanup complex through subsidiary CH2M, reported earnings Tuesday for the first quarter of its […]

Doug Shoop, manager of the Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site in Washington state, will retire from federal employment on Feb. 16. Shoop has led one of the two DOE offices overseeing the massive cleanup job at Hanford since July 2016. Brian Vance remains manager of the Office of River Protection. […]

The Energy Department has picked up a two-year option to keep North Wind Solutions in charge of the Transuranic Waste Processing Center at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee through October 2020. An Energy Department spokesperson confirmed Monday the department in October exercised its option to the original three-year base period. The entire five-year agreement […]

Allison Finelli, a staffer with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in Washington, D.C., recently accepted a 120-day detail as acting chief of staff at the Hanford Site’s Office of River Protection. In her interim role, Finelli will report to ORP Manager Brian Vance, sources said Thursday. She will serve as a primary aide […]

The Energy Department on Thursday issued the final request for proposals for the 222-S Laboratory Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The RFP was posted on the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center website for the procurement. Questions on the solicitation are due before noon Eastern time on Feb. 28 and should be […]

More than 45 people registered for the Jan. 24 site tour and industry briefing on the Tank Closure Contract at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, including some major contractors in the weapons complex. Companies represented at the gathering included: AECOM; AVANTech; Bechtel; Booz Allen Hamilton; BWX Technologies; Columbia Energy and Environmental […]

After moving relatively quickly through the confirmation process, former Senate staffer Terri Donaldson became the Department of Energy’s (DOE) permanent inspector general. The Energy Department swore in Donaldson on Jan. 23 for a lifetime appointment, but did not announce her installation at the Forrestal Building in Washington until Thursday. The Donald Trump administration nominated Donaldson in June 2018. The […]

The projected cost of remaining cleanup at the Hanford Site has dramatically increased over the last three years, according to a Department of Energy report made public on Feb. 1. The 2019 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost report estimates the remaining cost of environmental remediation of the former plutonium production complex in Washington state […]

The Department of Energy has determined that its current operating plans for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site do not require a supplement to a comprehensive 2012 supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) on radioactive tank waste at the Washington state cleanup complex. The agency concluded in a new analysis that altered plans for […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is expected to receive 330 shipments of transuranic waste over the next 12 months, with some coming from sites that have not shipped material in years. The Energy Department and its WIPP contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership, held a breakfast presentation Monday for New Mexico lawmakers, […]

The Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) should produce 300 canisters of treated sludge waste per year once the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) comes online later in 2019. That would be significantly higher than the 136 canisters produced in fiscal 2016, the 52 in fiscal 2017, and 18 in the last fiscal […]

The Energy Department has awarded a 10-month, $4.8 million task order to Tennessee-based Aerostar Perma-Fix TRU Services for the second phase of the Test Bed Initiative (TBI) on disposal of radioactive waste from the Hanford Site in Washington state. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the cost-plus-fixed-fee task order under an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract […]

While deactivation of the Main Plant Process Building at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York is nearly finished, demolition will be done under a successor to the current site cleanup contract held by CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley (CHBWV). The demolition was previously expected to start last year under the existing CHBWV contract. […]

The incumbent management and operations contractor and the vendor in charge of liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina both received at least 90 percent of their potential fee in new performance evaluations. Fluor-led site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation both received “excellent” overall […]

Roofing repairs at the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) H Canyon processing facility will begin this summer after rainwater dripped through a crack in the roof to the ground floor of the facility. The water became contaminated as it passed through the nuclear materials processing area on its way to the first level of the canyon, Monte […]

The last big segment of the Southwest Experimental Fast-Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) has been uprooted from its Arkansas home and shipped to the Nevada Nuclear Security Site for disposal. The reactor vessel and remaining components from the 20-megawatt, sodium-cooled test reactor arrived at the NNSS on Dec. 13, according to a January report to the Department […]