Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

SNC-Lavalin President and CEO Neil Bruce said Thursday that the Montreal-based engineering company enjoyed a solid third quarter and that the integration of British engineering and project management provider WS Atkins is nearly complete. “We are pleased with our third quarter results, which include a contribution from our recent transformational acquisition of Atkins,” Bruce said […]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved two Trump administration nominees to the Energy Department by voice vote. Mark Wesley Menezes of Virginia was approved to be undersecretary for the Department of Energy. Also approved was Paul Dabbar of New York to be undersecretary for science. Most recently, Menezes worked as vice president of federal relations […]

Two bidding groups have filed protests with the Government Accountability Office over the new contract for liquid waste management at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. One of the protests submitted on Tuesday was filed for the AECOM-CH2M Savannah River Technology and Remediation LLC by an attorney with the law firm […]

Fluor, one of the major contractors in the Department of Energy complex, on Thursday reported a significant earnings spike for the third quarter of 2017. The international construction and engineering firm reported quarterly net earnings of $94 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, compared to just shy of $5 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, […]

Centrus Energy said Monday it has signed a $16 million contract to continue for another year its research and development of advanced gas centrifuge uranium enrichment technology at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. However, the company’s time in at least one Oak Ridge facility is nearing its end as […]

In a closed-door meeting Thursday, the acting head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup program briefed the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on the 45-day review of his office’s operations and other key issues. An entry on the DNFSB calendar says the five-person board was scheduled to receive one of its periodic briefings from EM-1, […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility that has been built by Parsons Government Services at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina should be commissioned by the end of 2018. An article in the Oct. 20 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor misstated the timeline for commissioning. We regret the error.

A major waste treatment facility at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site as of this week remained in deliberate operations, more than four months after it was placed into the slowed work mode due to multiple safety-related incidents. Officials at the South Carolina facility did not respond to an inquiry regarding how much longer the situation […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General’s Office plans in the current federal budget year to review the most serious potential vulnerabilities facing the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as part of the IG’s responsibility to examine management and performance of the Energy Department watchdog. In documents released last week, the NRC IG said challenges include […]

Time ran out Monday for companies to submit proposals on a five-year low-level radioactive waste disposal contract with the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management, business that is now held by Waste Control Specialists and EnergySolutions. The Energy Department is expected to announce winners of the business, which could be worth a maximum outlay of […]

Piketon, Ohio, Mayor Billy Spencer is urging the state’s U.S. senators to oppose funding to build the on-site disposal cell for waste from cleanup of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. “DOE has made it clear that they fully intend to bury radioactive, toxic and hazardous waste in Piketon despite the community’s opposition, and Ohio EPA […]

Groundwater contamination at the site of old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Tennessee may persist beyond 2020, when the Department of Energy’s current $2.5 billion cleanup contract with URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) ends. David Adler, director of DOE’s Oak Ridge Environmental Management Quality and Mission Support Division, told a local advisory board that some […]

When engineering company and Energy Department contractor CH2M was looking for potential merger partners this past spring, eventual buyer Jacobs Engineering wasn’t the only party showing interest, CH2M noted in a mammoth filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. On Aug. 2, the two companies announced they had entered into an agreement for […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM) on Friday was completing its debriefing sessions for teams that bid on the Savannah River Site liquid waste management contract, sources told Weapons Complex Monitor. The agency announced on Oct. 12 that Savannah River EcoManagement, a partnership of BWX Technologies, Bechtel National, and Honeywell International, had won […]

With the House of Representatives already planning to look at the issue, the Senate on Oct. 19 approved a measure that could result in more predictable Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) for communities surrounding federal facilities, including many across the Energy Department complex. The amendment to the Senate’s fiscal 2018 budget package won approval […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. (CHPRC) has been awarded 92 percent of the fee available for fiscal 2016, the Department of Energy announced Monday. That compares to 95 percent the previous year. The Hanford Site cleanup contractor earned $14.1 million of $15.4 million available for the budget year ended Sept. 30, 2016. “CHPRC was very […]

A major contractor for Los Alamos National Laboratory has recently completed $7.5 million of cleanup work adjacent to the Los Alamos townsite in New Mexico. The cleanup, conducted by TerranearPMC and overseen by lab prime Los Alamos National Security LLC (LANS), was done on DOE property along the south-facing slopes of the Los Alamos Canyon. […]

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina garnered a 99.9 percent compliance rate last year for the amount of pollutants it discharges into water on and off site, according to the management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy facility. The compliance rate is based on the regularity with which SRS remained in line […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and the U.S. Justice Department are seeking opinions from a federal board on whether the contractor and one of its parent companies overcharged the federal government to the tune of $5 million, according to a recently filed status report in U.S. District Court. The document, filed on Oct. 10, arrived after six […]

An article in the Oct. 13 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor should have reported that the new liquid waste management contract for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site will not immediately cover the Salt Waste Processing Facility built by Parsons Government Services. Savannah River EcoManagement would run the plant after startup and one year […]

Some 31 of 305 bioassays collected from workers after the airborne spread of radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) in June have tested positive for internal radioactive contamination. Doses were very low, the Department of Energy said in a statement on Wednesday.  Of the 31 workers with positive results, 18 had […]

The Energy Department could debrief parties on the recently awarded Savannah River Site liquid waste management contract as early as Oct. 26, a source said this week, adding that it’s a good bet that at least one protest could be filed afterward. DOE announced on Oct. 12 that Savannah River EcoManagement, a partnership of BWX […]

Hanford Treatment Plants Process 2.2B Gallons of Water in FY17 The six groundwater treatment plants at the Hanford Site cleaned 2.2 billion gallons of water in the fiscal year just ended, reinjecting the processed water back into the ground, the Department of Energy announced Thursday. More than 145,000 pounds (72.5 tons) of contamination were removed. […]

While no director of mining has been hired yet for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the transuranic waste disposal site continues to move to resume salt mining. Work to clear out more space for storage has been held up for more than three years, after a pair of underground […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said in a new report the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has more work to do to resolve safety issues connected with criticality and flammable gas at the Waste Treatment Plant’s Pretreatment Facility at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The 100-page-plus technical report centers on four […]

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) has turned over for eventual private use parcels of land that once held two gaseous diffusion facilities at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The sites of the K-31 and K-33 buildings cover about 215 acres in what is now the East Tennessee Technology […]

After a bombshell report that the head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board wants Congress to dissolve the independent Department of Energy watchdog, several seasoned watchers of the weapons complex — running the gamut from former Department of Energy employees to hardcore anti-nuclear activists — said lawmakers should not eliminate the board. “The Board […]

Honeywell International reported Friday that it took in $10.1 billion in sales and earnings per share of $1.75 during the third quarter of 2017, which both mark a significant increase from the same period in 2016. The sales figure was up 3 percent from $9.8 billion a year ago. Earnings per share spiked by 16 […]