Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Energy Department could store transuranic waste up to 10 years at the Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) cleanup site in Schenectady County, N.Y., under a hazardous waste permit it has requested from the state. In early April, DOE submitted the application to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which expects to issue the draft […]

About two months after he left the federal ranks, the former top Department of Energy official at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., joined Atkins in a new role created for him. Jack Craig, who in February retired as manager of DOE’s Savannah River Site office after three years in that role and over […]

Following a five-month pause, plutonium downblending resumed in mid-March at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The mission involves dilution of 6 metric tons of nuclear weapon-usable, non-pit plutonium, and not the 34 metric tons of material intended to be processed by Savannah River’s MOX program. Operations began in September 2016, […]

The Department of Energy said Thursday it plans in 15 to 45 days to release a draft request for proposals for the Central Plateau Cleanup Contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state. A presolicitation conference, site tour, and one-on-one sessions are tentatively scheduled for late May or June, DOE said as it released a […]

The Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, Nuclear Waste Partnership, is likely to award a contract for construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System in May. That should be followed shortly afterward by a groundbreaking, with project completion expected in 2021, DOE Carlsbad Field Office Manager […]

Declining profit margins, in some cases just 2 to 4 percent, are a major reason for the wave of mergers and acquisitions by companies that do business in the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup sector, a senior executive with one contractor said last week. Contractors can expect to receive 5 to 7 percent if everything […]

A “bulging drum” of non-radiological waste resulted in a partial evacuation of the Sigma Complex at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on Monday. The Los Alamos Fire Department responded to the Sigma facility, on the main LANL campus, at about 2:30 p.m. Monday, a lab spokesperson said by email. The plastic drum […]

The Energy Communities Alliance got some good news last month when the omnibus budget for fiscal 2018 kept in place existing Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) agreements, ECA Director of Nuclear Energy Programs Kara Colton said Monday. The budget does call for a report on how the Energy Department formulates PILT payments to communities […]

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency plans to hold the U.S. Energy Department to its promise to dig up and consolidate contamination plumes and waste landfills at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. That is according to state EPA Director Craig Butler, in an April 6 letter to James Owendoff, principal deputy assistant secretary for DOE’s Office […]

New York state should in early 2019 issue a draft permit for interim storage of transuranic waste at the U.S. Energy Department’s Separations Process Research Unit, a state official said. The state Department of Environmental Conservation will issue the initial document for a 45-day public comment period, spokesman Rick Georgeson said by email. The department […]

Honeywell Aerospace, the division of that diversified contractor with major contracts throughout the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex, saw sales and profits rise by about 10 percent in the first quarter of 2018. Excluding costs related mostly related to foreign currency transactions, quarterly revenue for the Aerospace segment — which include the company’s work […]

The Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory suspended transuranic waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico immediately after an April 11 incident in which at least one 55-gallon drum of radioactive waste overheated and ejected its lid. The suspension was precautionary, and shipments resumed on Tuesday, Idaho Site cleanup contractor Fluor […]

The U.S. Department of Justice appears to be running out of patience after failing to reach a settlement agreement by a deadline Friday in a lawsuit with Washington Closure Hanford, a former Hanford Site prime cleanup contractor. The Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against Washington Closure, alleging it knowingly awarded small business subcontracts […]

The prime cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee said this week it self-reported the unauthorized work done by two employees at a retired experimental reactor in February 2017, which led to a $120,000 penalty. URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) is taking corrective actions not just at the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment […]

Outdated equipment appears to be the cause of a potential delay in startup of the $2.3 billion Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. While DOE is no longer publicly using the December 2018 date for the facility to begin operations, it is also not officially […]

Procurement officials at the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) are seeking to reduce the typical two-year process for awarding major contracts to one year. Tamara Miles, federal procurement director for the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center, discussed efforts to expedite contract awards during a panel session last month at the Waste […]

The management and operations contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., is reviewing three bid proposals from companies hoping to build a new permanent underground ventilation system for the deep-underground disposal site. Bid proposals were received March 21 and are now under review, Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) spokesman Donavan […]

With new leadership and more money for U.S. Energy Department environmental cleanup, community leaders and contractors attending an Energy Communities Alliance event Thursday were in an upbeat mood. Anne Marie White, sworn in March 29 as assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, appeared during a welcome luncheon at the organization’s annual conference in Washington, […]

The Department of Energy this week suggested it would not push back the deadline for would-be bidders to submit their proposals to build the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. In the request for proposals issued March 22, DOE allowed 46 days for bids to be submitted. Questions on the RFP were due […]

The Environmental Protection Agency told an official South Carolina nuclear-advisory body there is nothing the federal agency can do, for now, to prevent the Department of Energy from proceeding with its plan to cancel a multibillion-dollar nonproliferation project at the Savannah River Site in the state. That is according to a letter dated April 2 […]

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Wednesday pressed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ensure that a focus on particular projects at the Hanford Site does not come at the expense of others. Perry and other Energy Department officials appeared before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee to discuss the agency’s $30.6 billion budget request for […]

Utah-based EnergySolutions and Texas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS) have been awarded Energy Department contracts to dispose of low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and mixed-low level radioactive waste. The contracts are indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) agreements, DOE said in a press release. It did not provide dollar values for the contracts. The two vendors will compete for […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions will stay on the job for another year as the management and operations contractor of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Department of Energy wrote in a procurement note earlier this month. The agency announced the extension April 4, ahead of the July 31 expiration of the contract held […]

No injuries or environmental contamination apparently resulted after a drum of radioactive waste overheated and breached Wednesday at the Department of Energy’s Idaho Site, cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho said. The accident occurred Wednesday evening at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC) Accelerated Retrieval Project (ARP 5) containment structure before 11 p.m. MDT Thursday, Fluor said in […]

The Department of Energy and its regulators at the Hanford Site will hold their annual meeting on budget priorities on April 23. Representatives from both DOE Hanford offices – the Richland Operations Office and the Office of River Protection — will provide an overview of cleanup work completed and work to be done. The meeting […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 64 shipments of transuranic waste from Jan. 1 through March 21, 2018, according to the latest publicly available data. Of the shipments received by March 21, 48 came from the Idaho National Laboratory. The remaining 16 were split evenly between the Oak Ridge National […]

Cleanup funding figures reported for the Savannah River Site in the March 30 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor were for the full environmental management mission at the Department of Energy facility, not solely liquid waste management. A comparison of the site’s funding in this fiscal year and the budget proposal for the next year also […]