Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

Washington Closure Hanford and the Department of Justice told a federal judge Thursday they had reached a settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit alleging the then-Hanford Site cleanup contractor knowingly awarded small business subcontracts to front companies. They told the judge they would execute the agreement on Thursday, but had not filed it with the […]

The latest version of the Senate’s fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act calls upon the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report on repackaging of transuranic waste at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) after an April 11 incident in which the lids blew off four waste drums. It is “disturbing” that at least one of the […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., has resumed emplacement of transuranic waste that was suspended after detection of a misaligned drum on May 24. A recovery plan to fix the leaning drum within a seven-pack canister was approved May 29, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager Todd Shrader said Wednesday in […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., took home 90 percent of its total potential fee for fiscal 2017. That percentage was good for $10.7 million in fees for the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2017. That was a better percentage than the […]

The New Mexico Environment Department said June 1 it was not ready to decide whether to change the way it measures the volume of transuranic waste disposed of underground at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The New Mexico agency plans a more extensive “Class 3” review of the site permit modification, which […]

Spending plans that would ensure the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) will have somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 billion for cleanup of Cold War nuclear sites in fiscal 2019 continue to make their way through Congress. On Friday morning, the House of Representatives approved its fiscal 2019 energy and water appropriations as […]

The Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex in Ohio is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and the state’s historic preservation office wants a voice in cleanup plans for the contaminated site. The Ohio History Connection said in a May 16 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it should be […]

Two candidates with ties to organizations funded by or concerned with the Los Alamos National Laboratory won primary elections Tuesday night that effectively assure them seats in the New Mexico state House of Representatives, according to unofficial results from the New Mexico secretary of state. Andrea Romero, former executive director of the local interest group […]

Fluor Idaho has ordered certain work to temporarily stop while it investigates an employee puncture injury Tuesday at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Energy Department’s Idaho Site. The employee was injured while doing cleanup tasks in a glove box at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP), DOE said in a Thursday news […]

Longtime Energy Department nuclear cleanup hand Ken Picha has been named to a top post at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) on an acting basis. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said in a widely distributed email on May 25 that Picha was replacing Dae Chung as acting EM associate […]