Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

A House bill that would make it easier for the federal government to build a permanent nuclear-waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain took a big step toward a floor vote this week, though none was scheduled as of Friday. On Thursday, House leadership at last placed H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of […]

The hundreds of security personnel still on strike at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina are expected to return soon as their union and employer wrap up negotiations for a contract that won’t expire until October 2022. It was not immediately clear when the deal will be signed. Among its provisions, the new labor agreement […]

Honeywell’s decision to spin off three of its business units should not affect the company’s work with the Energy Department, a corporate spokesperson said Tuesday. Honeywell announced Tuesday it will spin off its Homes portfolio and ADI Global Distribution business into a separate home ventilation, security, and fire-protection company, and spin its Transportation Systems segment […]

About 200 workers were recently laid off from the MOX project at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, construction prime CB&I AREVA MOX Services said this week. Gentry Brann, a spokeswoman for contractor parent CB&I, said the project employed about 2,200 workers at SRS before the recent layoffs. She did not say when the layoffs […]

A fledgling effort by the Department of Energy to revive domestic production of plutonium-238 (Pu-238) in order to fuel deep space missions by NASA shows promise but still faces challenges, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Oct. 4. The Energy Department has demonstrated “a proof of concept” by producing 100 grams of Pu-238 […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry told a House of Representatives panel Thursday that progress is being made in improving the history of cost overruns and missed deadlines on big projects administered through the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. Perry testified for more than three hours before the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee. While much […]

Installation of the two melters for the Low-Activity Waste Facility at the Hanford’ Site’s Waste Treatment Plant has been completed, a key milestone on the project, plant officials announced Wednesday. “When operational, these melters will be the largest operating vitrification plant melters in the world,” said Bill Hamel, Department of Energy project director for the […]

A Texas congressman gave Energy Secretary Rick Perry an opportunity to come clean Thursday about his use of charter aircraft for official government business — something Perry maintained, in line with previous reports, that he has done only once. Rep. Joe Barton (R), in a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, told […]

A Benton County, Wash., Superior Court jury found in favor of a former employee’s lawsuit against Mission Support Alliance on Tuesday, requiring the Hanford Site support services contractor to pay damages of $8.1 million. Manager Julie Atwood resigned when she was told she would be fired from MSA in 2013. She filed a lawsuit claiming […]

A group comprised of BWX Technologies, Bechtel National, and Honeywell International has won a contract valued at $4.7 billion over 10 years for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management announced Thursday. Savannah River EcoManagement’s contact features a seven-year base and a three-year option […]

The state of South Carolina has asked for summary judgment in its recent $100 million lawsuit against the Department of Energy over plutonium disposition at the Savannah River Site. The request was filed Oct. 6 – the same day the federal agency asked that the suit be thrown out. South Carolina filed the complaint on Aug. […]

More than 400 unionized workers at the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico ratified a new three-year labor pact Monday, the Atomic Projects and Production Workers, Metal Trades Council, said Tuesday. “The Collective Bargaining Agreement was accepted by a majority of the membership employed at Sandia National Labs who came out to vote […]

Hanford Subcontractor Settles Federal Fraud Case Sage Tec and its owner, Laura Shikashio, have agreed to pay $235,000 to settle allegations of subcontracting fraud at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Department of Justice said on Oct. 6. The announcement came less than a month after a second Hanford-area company in the federal court […]

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is urging the state’s congressional delegation to continue advocating for the MOX project at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site, which is again in danger of being defunded. In a Sept. 14 letter, McMaster provided all lawmakers from the state with a recent report from the governor’s South Carolina Nuclear […]

A new buyer for Waste Control Specialists is expected to be announced in October, four months after a federal judge blocked a prior acquisition attempt, President and CEO Rod Baltzer said Monday. Baltzer mentioned the timeline during a presentation at the Nuclear Decommissioning and Used Fuel Strategy Summit in Charlotte, N.C., according to multiple industry […]

The Department of Energy on Tuesday finalized the membership package to reconstitute the Hanford Advisory Board (HAB), which has been unable to establish a quorum to conduct business for three months. Membership for about half the members of the board expired at the end of June. Half of the members and their alternates for 32 […]

Crews at the Hanford Site in Washington state by Thursday morning had injected 61 truckloads of grout into the PUREX Plant waste storage tunnel that was discovered on May 9 to have partially collapsed. Work was scheduled to continue Thursday night, when traffic would be light as cement trucks hauled the grout to the underground […]

The Department of Energy’s Volpentest HAMMER Federal Training Center at the Hanford Site was praised at its 20th anniversary celebration Thursday by officials ranging from national and international organized labor leaders to the governor of Washington. The 88-acre facility, a training center for Hanford workers, includes classrooms and an extensive set of training props, including: […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site downblended 16 kilograms of nuclear weapon-usable plutonium in fiscal 2017, and is expected to nearly double amount in the current budget year. Officials from the South Carolina facility reported the figure last week during a bimonthly meeting of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). Downblending began in September 2016, […]

In what appears to be a sign of progress, Bechtel National has filed a revised preliminary documented safety analysis to the Department of Energy for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s High-Level Waste Facility. The document is intended to support the resumption of procurement and construction on the facility, according to a newly released weekly […]

There is some surprise among Department of Energy contractors that the agency has not yet awarded a new contract for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, an industry source said Wednesday. The major procurements summary from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, as of Aug. 11, projected the new contract would […]

Energy Department officials who attended a Monday meeting of the village of Piketon, Ohio, Council to give a progress update on cleanup of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, ended up hearing a lot about local opposition to an on-site disposal site for waste from the project. It was a standing room only crowd, Piketon Mayor […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is expected to receive 170 shipments of transuranic waste from the Idaho National Laboratory between August 2017 and August 2018, officials said during a WIPP Town Hall last week in the city of Carlsbad. Idaho will account for nearly two-thirds of the 258 anticipated total […]

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control expects cleanup work to begin at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) site in 2019 and possibly be finished in 2034, according to the timeline laid out in the agency’s latest monthly report on the radioactively contaminated 2,850-acre site in Ventura County. The Santa Susana project has been […]

A new president has been named for Hanford Site support services provider Mission Support Alliance (MSA) as the current president, Bill Johnson, moves on to a corporate job at Leidos. Johnson has served as MSA president since early 2015 and will leave Hanford on Oct. 16, according to a message he sent to employees Thursday. […]

Two sources in New Mexico said Thursday the Los Alamos National Laboratory is slightly more than two-thirds through treatment of potentially combustible waste containers. At a late September meeting of the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board, an Energy Department official reported that 20 drums of inappropriately remediated nitrate salts remained to be treated, one […]

Lawmakers are piling on to co-sponsor a House bill that would smooth the way to open Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository. This week alone, 32 additional representatives associated themselves with Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 (H.R.3053): a 45-page bill officially introduced in the […]