Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Department of Energy should reclassify treated liquid waste stored in glass logs at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., so the material will be eligible for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N.M., the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) recommended Tuesday. The recommendation, approved in a 19-2 vote, asks the […]

The Department of Energy is just days from sealing a one-year extension for the management and operations contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a senior official said Monday. “As you know the M&O contract expires on 31 July and any day now we’ll have an extension signed,” Michael Budney, manager of DOE’s […]

Workers for Idaho National Laboratory cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho have full access to glove boxes following an extended suspension of operations after an employee suffered a puncture wound on June 5. The incident occurred while the employee was conducing cleanup activities in a glove box at the lab’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP). By […]

Bob McQuinn, an AECOM senior executive who, among other things, led the prime contractor team for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), for about a year following a 2014 accident, has announced he will retire at the end of August. McQuinn is vice president of the company’s performance assurance and high-level waste sector. […]

A federal judge has placed a South Carolina lawsuit against the Department of Energy on hold until an appeals court decides if she was right to block the agency from stopping work at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). It would not make sense to address other issues in the high stakes […]

The Energy Department is seeking feedback from small business contractors who might be interested in cleaning up the F-Building Storage Yard (F-Yard) at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) facility near Schenectady, N.Y. The department’s Office of Environmental Management said Tuesday it is issuing a request for information (RFI)/sources sought, in order to connect with […]

A dozen current and former fire captains or platoon sergeants at the Hanford site in Washington state are seeking overtime back pay and damages in a federal lawsuit filed against site-wide services contractor Mission Support Alliance (MSA). The plaintiffs say MSA owes them overtime pay, equal to one-and-a-half times their normal hourly wage, for time […]

A new project baseline proposal for the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) was recently submitted by Parsons and is currently under review by the U.S. Department of Energy, an agency spokesperson confirmed this week in an email. Parsons submitted the plan last month. The Department of Energy (DOE) spokesperson said SWPF will […]

Nearly a week after a technically bipartisan delegation of House members and staff visited Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., lawmakers still have not set a date to begin final negotiations on a 2019 budget bill that, technically, could include funding for the proposed waste-repository. Those negotiations, a bicameral conference committee of lawmakers from the […]

Nuclear Watch New Mexico (NukeWatch) can continue to pursue its lawsuit against the Energy Department and its former Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) contractor for failing to do certain tasks spelled out in a 2005 consent order, but a federal judge won’t throw out a revised 2016 settlement between DOE and the state of New […]

The Department of Energy delayed the release of a draft request for proposals for further cleanup of the Hanford Site’s central plateau until sometime between now and Sept. 30, the agency announced this week. The draft solicitation won’t be issued until after the department discusses the planned procurement in August with prospective vendors. “The Central […]

Having already shifted the Energy Department’s Cold War cleanup office to a different undersecretary, the Donald Trump administration isn’t finished yet in remodeling DOE, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was told Thursday. The administration wants to make the Energy Department more efficient and better able to carry out core missions, including “addressing the […]

A sinkhole discovered last month near the 2H Evaporator at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has been fixed, a DOE spokesperson said Friday by email. The sinkhole, about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and more than 3 feet deep, was discovered in asphalt on the east side of the evaporator […]

The Energy Department and its prime contractor received 169 shipments of transuranic waste for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico during the first six months of 2018. That averages out to 6.5 shipments per week for the first 26 weeks of the year. By comparison, there were 133 shipments, or […]

To prevent it from collapsing, the Department of Energy wants to start filling a second PUREX plant waste storage tunnel at the Hanford site with concrete-like grout in August — before the end of a scheduled public comment period about the effort. The Washington State Department of Ecology, lead state regulator at Hanford, plans a […]

The Department of Energy is limiting options for future use of Hanford land with the cleanup decisions it is making now, according to a new Columbia Riverkeeper report. The Oregon-based group, which works to protect and restore the water quality of the Columbia River, released “Competing Visions for the Future of Hanford” on Tuesday. DOE […]

The Energy Department and contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth expect soil excavation and installation of necessary infrastructure for a planned on-site radioactive waste disposal cell at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio should be completed in fiscal 2019. Recent progress includes setting up trailers for work crews, installing security fencing along the perimeter of the site, including sedimentation […]

All Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) operations resumed at the end of June, following a two-month pause on all missions considered not essential to maintaining safety.  Lab management initiated the pause due to growing concerns over the facility’s safety culture. The Department of Energy lab in South Carolina has been in management-controlled operations since June […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology has issued an operations permit for the analytical laboratory for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. This permit, issued in the spring, is the state agency’s first operations approval for the plant being built by Bechtel to turn Hanford’s radioactive tank […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management on Tuesday released a request for information and sources sought inquiry for stack dismantlement at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. The Environmental Management office is planning an upcoming solicitation for a contractor to decommission, tear down, and conduct site clearance for the High Flux Beam […]

The Energy Department is seeking Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval for a one-time shipment of 2.5 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel material from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to the Idaho National Laboratory for research purposes. The nuclear regulator said June 26 it had received DOE’s application for approval of a shipment route and […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina would look for ways to accelerate shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico under a proposal being studied by a local advisory board. The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board is expected to vote on making the recommendation to DOE […]

The House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee voted Thursday to reauthorize the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state and instruct the Government Accountability Office to prepare a report on radioactive waste at the site. The bill passed on a voice vote is an amended version of legislation forwarded June 27 by the […]

Elevated levels of radioactive contamination were found last month on transuranic waste drums awaiting shipment from the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, according to a recent update from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). “The contamination readings were due to the decay of […]

The parties to the Tri-Party Agreement on environmental remediation of the Hanford Site in Washington state have verified that the challenging cleanup of the 618-10 Burial Ground has been completed. That meets the deadline under the agreement for completion of the project by the end of this fiscal year, according to the Department of Energy. […]

The House and Senate are a step closer to resolving their differences on a three-bill appropriations package that includes the Department of Energy fiscal 2019 budget, after the upper chamber on Wednesday voted to begin final negotiations on the measure. In a procedural move that cleared the way for lawmakers from each chamber to negotiate […]

After Losing Suit, Former Savannah River Employee Must Pay Printing Costs In what should be the final chapter of a federal discrimination lawsuit, a former employee of the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor has been ordered to pay the company $908.45 for the cost of documents printed documents over the course of the […]

The current 30-month option period for Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth’s $3.4 billion decontamination and decommissioning contract for the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, is scheduled to expire Sept. 30. While a DOE spokesperson confirmed Tuesday the contract has not been extended beyond Sept. 30, other details were sparse. The Energy Department has not said if […]