Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The 200-foot-tall ventilation stack at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant crashed to the ground Saturday in an explosive demolition. It was another step toward bringing the plant down to slab on grade by the end of September as required by the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) covering cleanup at the former plutonium production complex in Washington […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) received more shipments of transuranic waste in June than in any of the three months since it again began accepting waste from across the Energy Department’s nuclear complex, official records show. Since reopening its gates in April to waste from across the country, DOE has confirmed receipt of 31 […]

The Energy Department and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant notified the New Mexico Environment Department last week that they plan to start major upgrades to the site’s ventilation system by next December. The notification was part of a recently published letter to John Kieling, chief of the New Mexico Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste […]

WASHINGTON — A Senate committee convened here Thursday to consider three of President Donald Trump nominees for senior Energy Department jobs The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will mull the testimony of the three DOE nominees and, in a business meeting that had not been scheduled at press time for Weapons Complex Monitor,  vote on […]

Contractors from CTI and Associates Inc. are finishing the final paperwork on a demolished switchyard at the old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Tennessee. Last week, CTI hauled the last pieces of the switchyard away from the site, now called the East Tennessee Technology Park. Constructed in 1944, the 4-acre K-732 switchyard was one […]

The Department of Energy is evaluating multiple options for stabilizing the second radioactive waste storage tunnel for the PUREX facility at the Hanford Site, as an Aug. 1 deadline nears. The Washington state Department of Ecology set the deadline for DOE to present a draft plan for stabilizing the second tunnel after the other PUREX […]

The University of Arkansas hopes Congress will soon come through with the last $10.1 million needed to complete cleanup of the long-disused Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) facility. The university aims in October to begin the third and final phase of the nearly decade-long remediation program, which would involve removing the plant reactor and […]

A former employee who filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste management provider must respond to the contractor’s motion for dismissal by July 28, or the case will be thrown out. A federal judge set the deadline after attorneys for Jimmy Rouse missed an earlier response date this month. In a lawsuit filed […]

A major waste treatment facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina was placed in deliberate operations last month following multiple safety-related incidents in recent months. The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) entered into deliberate operations – a reduced work phase in which personnel pay extra attention to detail and planning when conducting […]

The Energy Department would get no money to turn Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., into a permanent nuclear-waste disposal site under a roughly $30-billion agency budget the Senate Appropriations Committee approved Thursday. The committee signaled its intention in draft legislation that leaked earlier in the week before appropriators released the language of their bill and […]

The Energy Department and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant notified the New Mexico Environment Department last week that they plan to start major upgrades to the site’s ventilation system by next December. The notification was part of a recently published letter to John Kieling, chief of the New Mexico Environment Department’s Hazardous Waste […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2018 energy funding bill directs the National Nuclear Security Administration to address various legal and diplomatic hurdles in its proposed alternative plutonium disposition method before Congress considers funding the new approach and abandoning the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction in South Carolina. The House version of the energy and […]

Thermal imaging scans were being collected over 20 square miles at the center of the Hanford Site this week to help determine where radioactive waste might be buried. A crew using a small airplane started the flights early Wednesday morning and expected to continue over early mornings for three to five days. Information is being […]

The public meeting promised by the Department of Energy on the structural integrity of the Hanford Site’s PUREX Tunnel No. 2 has been set for 6 p.m. July 20., at the Courtyard by Marriott, 480 Columbia Point Drive in Richland, Wash. The workshop will be webcast. Registration information can be found here. DOE and the Washington […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. and the Washington state Department of Ecology have reached a settlement agreement over waste storage that waives a $50,000 penalty against the Hanford Site cleanup contractor. The state had accused CH2M in August 2016 of breaching requirements for the storage of five containers of waste at Hanford’s T Plant, including identifying […]

The White House is considering Alan Parker, who now leads one of the Energy Department’s nuclear-cleanup contractors, to head the agency’s entire remediation of its Cold War legacy as assistant secretary of energy for environmental management (EM), a source said Thursday. Parker is currently president and project manager for Mid-America Conversion Services: a new Atkins-led contracting […]

Mark Gilbertson has replaced Frank Marcinowski as the top policy and regulatory affairs official in the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), according to official agency correspondence reviewed by Weapons Complex Monitor. A DOE spokesperson in Washington confirmed Wednesday that Gilbertson is EM’s current acting associate principal deputy assistant secretary for regulatory and […]

The remaining portions of the site that once housed the old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Tennessee will be fully remediated within three years, well ahead of the original schedule, according to Ken Rueter, president of Energy Department site cleanup contractor URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR). The last Manhattan Project-era uranium enrichment building, K-27, came […]

House lawmakers this week approved a fiscal 2018 energy and water budget that would give the the Department of Energy about $30 billion and add three new cleanup projects to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The House Appropriations Committee agreed by voice vote Wednesday, with a few Democrat dissenters, to send the nearly $38 billion 2018 […]

Members of the House of Representatives have thrown early support in the latest budget process behind sustaining funding for the MOX project at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, but their colleagues in the Senate are so far silent on whether they will also again back the controversial program. The House version of the fiscal 2018 […]

After a federal judge blocked Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists’ takeover by EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City, the Texas company is still trying to figure out what to do with more than 100 potentially flammable containers of transuranic waste it is storing for the Energy Department. Asked what the canceled merger means for the company’s contract […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. and the Washington state Department of Ecology have reached a settlement agreement over waste storage includes the waiver of a $50,000 penalty against the Hanford Site cleanup contractor. The state had accused CH2M in August 2016 of breaching requirements for the storage of five containers of waste at Hanford’s T Plant, […]

Lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee this week approved a fiscal 2018 energy budget that “fully supports” the Department of Energy’s plan to create a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada — though in a slightly different way than the White House imagined. “The Committee fully supports the Administration’s position to move […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico remains compliant with U.S. environmental law essential to the transuranic waste facility’s ongoing operations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday. Every five years, under the federal law that created the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EPA must recertify that the Department of Energy is complying with the […]

Adams Natural Resources Consulting Services of Carson City, Nev., will aid Nevada’s legal efforts to oppose the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository for another year, under a contract modification approved Wednesday. Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske approved the extension during a state Board of […]

Betsy Connell was still employed as chief of staff for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management as of July 3, a government source said. An article in the June 30 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor (“Cange Leads EM Personnel Exodus” Vol. 28, No. 6) cited informed sources saying she was one of three senior DOE officials […]

A large wildfire spread across the security perimeter of the Hanford Site onto the main portion of the facility late Sunday night, burning 1,644 acres. The overall fire was contained to 30,984 acres by Thursday, but the Hanford Fire Department had the blaze on the main portion of the Department of Energy site contained at […]

Days after the transition was set to start, the Energy Department has yet to announce who will take over the next decade of legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under a contract that went out to bid in September. In its final request for proposals, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) advised […]