Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Energy Department found no evidence its conflicts of interest rules were violated when the Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board (SSAB) voted May 10 whether to request the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, and DOE, reopen the 2015 record of decision for an on-site waste disposal cell at the cleanup site. Advisory panel member Dennis Foreman, […]

Streamlining top-level management of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup operation is one part of a sweeping blueprint for restructuring the federal government, which the White House Housed unveiled on Thursday. The report, “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century: Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations,” proposes to increase efficiency in agency operations across the federal government. That […]

After searching since late 2017, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), the Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has hired a director of underground mining. The contractor and DOE said Tuesday Pete Graham, who previously worked as a plant manager for US Silica in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., started at WIPP […]

Fluor Idaho said this week it has not yet lifted a stop work order in effect for certain operations at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory. The order was issued after a June 5 accident in which an employee suffered a puncture wound while doing cleanup work in a glove box at the Advanced Mixed […]

Respiratory protection requirements have again been eased at a Hanford Site double-shell tank farm, with directives in some additional radioactive waste storage tank farms expected to be reduced later this summer, according to contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS). Workers now are allowed to use full-face air-purifying respirators equipped with filter cartridges as protection from […]

Invoking the threat of countermeasures he did not specifically explain, the head of security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has warned drone pilots they might lose their aircraft if they fly too close to the storied New Mexico nuclear weapons lab. “The laboratory is authorized by federal law to track, intercept, disrupt, control, and […]

An amendment to a federal spending package, to reverse existing Energy Department policy and treat waste at the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York state as defense-related, evidently won’t be coming up for a vote. The Senate adjourned without considering the amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). Lawmakers would have only two hours to […]

The Department of Energy has yet to determine whether certain members of the Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board (SSAB) had conflicts of interest that should have kept them from voting on an issue last month, sources said this week. Dennis Foreman, a Pike County, Ohio, teacher who serves on the advisory panel, made a formal […]

A June 8 article in Weapons Complex Monitor cited the Idaho Site and the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) as “small cites” in Energy Department cleanup operations, and failed to include the Separations Process Research Unit, the West Valley Demonstration Project, and the Nevada National Security Site. While the Energy Department’s fiscal 2019 budget […]

Liquid waste operations at the Savannah River Site restarted this week following a 15-month layup that included multiple delays to resumption due to maintenance issues at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). The DWPF is responsible for converting millions of gallons of radioactive liquid waste at the Energy Department facility in South Carolina into a […]

Watchdog group Hanford Challenge is objecting to a Department of Energy plan to classify the waste remaining in the Hanford Site’s C Tank Farm as residual waste, or waste incidental to reprocessing (WIR). The new classification would allow the remaining waste in the C Farm’s 16 tanks to be considered low-level radioactive waste and the […]

Three technologies are sufficiently developed for consideration to treat some of the low-activity radioactive waste stored at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a new report from a National Academies panel. The panel plans to issue four reports on supplemental treatment of Hanford low-activity waste. Congress ordered the study, which is […]

Washington Closure Hanford agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit alleging subcontracting fraud at the Hanford Site cleanup in Washington state, the Department of Justice announced on June 8. The parties told U.S. District Judge Sal Mendoza Jr. the day before they had reached an agreement but did not release the amount […]

While actual construction is not scheduled to begin until later this summer, the Energy Department held a ceremonial groundbreaking Thursday for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s $288 million Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS). Site clearing and power line relocation is already underway for the project, which is considered essential to the future of underground […]

The Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG) last week elected a new member to its Board of Directors and re-elected another six members. First-time board member Bob Miklos is director of Production Facilities and Infrastructure at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex. He has 30 years of experience with nuclear facilities and also chairs EFCOG’s project […]

Louisiana-based PacTec Inc., a maker of industrial containment bags used at both Energy Department and commercial nuclear cleanup sites, claims in a new federal lawsuit that another company is violating its patents. PacTec claims Pennsylvania-based ICE Service Group and two Tennessee-based affiliates, ICE Packaging and Strategic Packaging, are “making, using, offering for sale, selling, or […]

A final hearing to help determine if the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor overcharged the federal government by $5 million will likely be held in October, according to a status report filed Monday in the lawsuit. The joint report was submitted by legal teams for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and the U.S. […]

An Idaho environmental group said this week it has significant concerns about the potential for the Energy Department to move 7,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste from the Hanford Site in Washington state to the Idaho National Laboratory for repackaging. While no written application has been filed, the idea has been kicking around DOE for […]

Bechtel, a major contractor for the Energy Department’s nuclear complex, announced June 7 it will move its corporate headquarters to one of Washington, D.C.’s Northern Virginia suburbs. The international engineering, procurement, and construction company said it will move corporate operations from Houston and San Francisco to Reston, Va., by the end of 2018. Bechtel already […]

Vendors have until July 20 to bid on a new consolidated technical support services contract for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and other EM sites. The DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center (EMCBC) issued the final request for proposals (RFP) for technical support on June 7. The RFP is […]

Workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state successfully transferred the first batch of highly radioactive sludge out of underwater storage in the K West Reactor Basin late Tuesday afternoon. The Department of Energy had a Tri-Party Agreement deadline, reset most recently in 2015, to start removing sludge from the basin by the end of […]

The Department of Energy on Thursday released its request for proposals for an occupational medical services provider for the Hanford Site in Washington state. The new contract is expected to feature three types of scope: firm-fixed price, cost reimbursement, and indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity. The estimated value of the contract was increased from $120 million when […]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to close debate on its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2019, setting up a floor vote Monday on the measure that sets spending caps on defense environmental cleanup at the Department of Energy. Senators voted 81-15 in favor of cloture. The defense policy bill, passed […]

The Trump administration has officially nominated former corporate environmental lawyer Teri Donaldson to be the Department of Energy’s inspector general, but a logjam in the Senate means it could be a while before she gets a nomination hearing. Donaldson, currently the general counsel for Sen. John Barraso (R-Wyo.), was officially nominated Monday evening, when the […]

The Energy Department’s staggering environmental liability at its Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear sites keeps Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White “up at night,” she said Thursday in Washington, D.C. Environmental liability is one of the U.S. government’s larger line items, behind the federal debt and entitlement programs such as Social […]

The Energy Department and contractor AECOM said Thursday the last phase of building demolition is finished at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in upstate New York and cleanup should be completed this fall. A two-year demolition project for Buildings H2 and G2 ended last month on the property located at the Knolls Atomic Power […]

Liquid waste processing at the Savannah River Site almost restarted last month after a 15-month outage, but is instead slated to begin next week after workers fix a seal at the site’s major waste processing facility that allows treated waste to properly pour into the storage canister. Chemical operations at the 310-square-muile site near Aiken, […]

Road upgrades are due to begin this week around the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a byproduct of a settlement agreement between DOE and the state of New Mexico over a 2014 accident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday the first of […]