Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Katherine Herrera will become deputy technical director of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) effective Dec. 24, a spokesperson for the independent federal nuclear health-and-safety group said this week. In her new position, Herrera will help manage about two-thirds of the board’s full-time employees as the No. 2 official in the DNFSB’s Office of […]

Centerra has won 96 percent of its potential fee award from the Department of Energy for providing a security force to protect the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In particular, DOE in a new award-fee scorecard praised Centerra-Savannah River Site for establishing and testing an “active shooter response plan.” Centerra was also cited for […]

With the calendar year ticking away, the Energy Department has issued another procurement inquiry — this one a draft request for proposals for a contract valued at roughly $120 million over seven years to provide occupational medical services at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Energy Department announced the draft RFP on Wednesday. The […]

Jacobs Engineering Group is in discussions to divest its 41 percent share of Mission Support Alliance, the support services contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Jacobs’ acquisition of CH2M, which was completed on Dec. 15, leaves the new owner with a conflict of interest at Hanford. Along with being part […]

Having just completed its $3.27 billion buyout of CH2M, Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering released new information Monday about its business going forward as a $15 billion engineering and infrastructure heavyweight. “Today, we are celebrating the creation of a new Jacobs,” Chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou said in a news release. In the release, Jacobs praised CH2M’s […]

A lapse in communication procedures likely contributed the spread of radioactive particles at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site that contaminated 14 vehicles and led to checks at seven workers’ homes. As of midday Thursday, 240 workers at the Washington state facility had requested bioassays to determine whether they had inhaled radioactive particles. The spread […]

The work of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup branch should not be changed significantly by its shift into the Office of the Undersecretary for Science, industry sources said this week. Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced the new home of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management on Dec. 15 as part of a larger DOE reorganization. Moving […]

A team comprised of Stoller Newport News Nuclear and BWX Technologies has been awarded a $1.39 billion contract for legacy cleanup operations at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. This will be Stoller’s first major operational contract at the nuclear weapons lab, where BWXT is an old hand as a partner […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has authorized Waste Control Specialists (WCS) to store radioactive waste from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory for an additional two years, to nearly the end of 2018. The decision is one of a long list of updates to the company’s state radioactive material license approved […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not be published on Dec. 29 in observance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Please look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Jan. 5, 2018.

Congress on Thursday adopted another budget continuing resolution to keep the federal government, including the Energy Department and its Office of Environmental Management, running through Jan. 19 The stopgap funding measure cleared the House in a 231-188 vote, and the Senate followed up with a 66-32 decision. Just before press time for Weapons Complex Monitor, […]

The Department of Energy on Friday made official a long-rumored bureaucratic reorganization that puts the agency’s Cold War nuclear-cleanup programs under new management but leaves the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration essentially unchanged. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) roughly $6.5-million-a-year Office of Environmental Management (EM), steward of environmental remediation of Cold War nuclear weapons sites […]

BWX Technologies said Thursday that Executive Chairman of the Board John Fees would become non-executive chairman as of May 4, 2018. The Lynchburg, Va.-based Department of Energy contractor noted also in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has entered into a “transition agreement” that spells out financial compensation for Fees […]

After a three-year hiatus, the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., should resume salt mining in a matter of days, according to site management and operations contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP). The resumption would mark another key step toward a return to normalcy for the nation’s only permanent underground disposal site […]

While some details remain to be worked out, Energy Secretary Rick Perry has approved a five-year extension for Battelle Energy Alliance to continue as the management and operations contractor for the Idaho National Laboratory through Sept. 30, 2024. Battelle Energy Alliance LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Battelle Memorial Institute, manages the laboratory with integrated […]

Navarro Research and Engineering earned more than 97 percent of its total potential fiscal 2017 award fee from the Department of Energy Nevada Environmental Program Services (EPS) contract. Navarro garnered $835,975 of a potential $857,037 for the period from Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30, 2017, for work at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). […]

Colorado-based CH2M on Friday officially became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering, CH2M announced in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. More details about the merger will be disclosed Monday, CH2M said at press time. CH2M shareholders voted Wednesday to approve the buyout. The preliminary results of the special meeting […]

With settlement talks continuing, parties in the chemical vapors lawsuit at the Hanford Site in Washington state have asked a federal judge to delay the trial date for another three months. Parties are requesting that the trial date be extended until Nov. 27, 2018. If a trial occurs then, it would be three years after […]

Following an extended back and forth with the Department of Energy, contractor Bechtel has only been required to repay a sliver of the $5.5 million in costs challenged in a federal audit for its work over several years at the Hanford Site in Washington state. A final determination, issued by DOE Contracting Officer Ronald Cone […]

The contaminated Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee could be encased in concrete, according to the top nuclear cleanup official at the Department of Energy site. Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) Manager Jay Mullis told an environmental advisory board in November that DOE is considering the plan. […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. stopped demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant for two days this week after laboratory results came back positive for air samples collected in seven monitors. The monitors were worn by workers on their lapels to detect radioactive contaminants near the air they breathe. A positive result could mean […]

Bechtel National is assigning a new project director for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) it is building at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state as it moves toward a new phase of work, the partial startup of waste treatment as soon as 2022. Peggy McCullough, the contractor’s current WTP project director, told plant […]

The House Appropriations Committee this week unveiled a peculiar budget bill that would provide full-year fiscal 2018 appropriations for the Pentagon, but keep other federal agencies including the Department of Energy funded at prior-year levels through Jan. 19. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) introduced the bill Wednesday. The Department of Energy (DOE), like […]

South Carolina is giving the Department of Energy extra time — more than a year in one case — to meet key milestones in treatment of liquid waste and closure of storage tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The previously unreported suspension agreement, signed on Nov. 6 by DOE, the South Carolina Department of Health and […]

Hanford Site services contractor Mission Support Alliance (MSA) has selected Amy Basche, a longtime worker at the Department of Energy complex in Washington state, as its new chief operations officer. Basche replaces Bob Wilkinson, who was promoted to president in October after prior company President Bill Johnson left for a corporate job with Leidos, one of MSA’s […]

A senior industry source said Tuesday he is hearing an increasing amount of “chatter” that the Trump administration might early next year nominate someone to lead the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. The source said the talk is circulating among a trusted circle of industry representatives who often share such rumors. Assuming approval by […]

Washington Closure Hanford has asked a federal judge for summary judgment in the Department of Justice lawsuit accusing the former Energy Department cleanup contractor of falsely claiming credit for awarding three subcontracts to women-owned small businesses. A hearing on the motion filed in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington is scheduled for Jan. 12 at […]

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has begun analyzing whether the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico would be a viable facility for storage of plutonium that would be downblended at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In its fiscal 2017 budget, Congress mandated that the nongovernmental research organization conduct […]