Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators plans to reintroduce a bill that, in its most recent form, would have created a new federal agency dedicated to dealing with nuclear waste, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said during a Wednesday hearing here on Capitol Hill. Alexander would sponsor the legislation along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). The […]

The contractor building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, locked in a dispute with the federal government over the project’s future, argued the Energy Department’s failure to negotiate a contract modification “in good faith” is costing the company money. On June 1, the U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals denied CB&I AREVA […]

The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request for the Hanford Site’s Richland Operations Office is inadequate, regulators for the Department of Energy facility in Washington state said Wednesday during discussions at a Hanford Advisory Board meeting and a public budget meeting. The proposed $800 million for the office – which includes security and cybersecurity […]

WASHINGTON — In a mostly symbolic milestone that nevertheless carries measurable cost savings, the Energy Department could close out Washington Closure Hanford’s contract by the end of 2017, a senior DOE official said here Wednesday. “I think we may be at the end of this year able to say we have everything done to close […]

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers from Ohio are prodding Energy Secretary Rick Perry to visit the Portsmouth Site their state: one of the legacy nuclear cleanup sites Perry has yet to see since taking the reins at the Energy Department in March. “We think it would be important [for Perry] to be there and have some […]

When Westinghouse Government Services opened an office just outside Washington, D.C., this week, the resurgent nuclear-cleanup contractor threw itself a little housewarming party. Many of the guests were members of what company President Cathy Hickey calls “the DOE contractors club:” a tight-knit group of sometimes-competitive, sometimes-cooperative outfits that includes heavyweights such as AECOM, Bechtel, BWX […]

The Energy Department this week was to debrief the runners-up for the potentially 10-year, $1.5 billion contract won by a CH2M-led team for continued cleanup of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky. DOE received four bids for the contract, which the agency announced May 26 went to Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership. The team also includes […]

Workers at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant were ordered to take cover indoors for more than three hours Thursday morning as a precaution after an air monitor detected low levels of airborne contamination, according to the Department of Energy. A survey subsequently found spots of radioactive contamination had spread outside the demolition zone established […]

Two Savannah River Remediation workers were contaminated with beta and gamma radiation at the Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility this week, according to an official Department of Energy account of the incident. The incident occurred Wednesday when one employee spilled a sample of liquid waste pulled from an oil drum. The sample splattered […]

WASHINGTON — Acting Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Sue Cange would not comment Wednesday about rumors that she will be replaced as the temporary head of DOE’s Cold War nuclear-cleanup program. Politico Pro first reported Wednesday that DOE will replace Cange, an agency veteran who came to DOE headquarters after managing cleanup at the […]

CAST Specialty Transportation will haul transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant over the next five years under a potentially $112 million contract announced by the Energy Department Thursday. Under the deal, an indefinite-quantity, indefinite-delivery contract using firm fixed-price task orders, CAST “will provide facilities, personnel, and equipment to operate a local terminal within […]

Fluor Idaho sent an improperly sealed container of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant last month, but inspectors at that New Mexico disposal facility caught the mistake, according to a public notice from the Energy Department. The waste, shipped to WIPP May 10 in a TRUPACT-II container that can hold around 1.5 cubic […]

The Department of Energy is making plans to fill the partially collapsed waste tunnel at the Hanford PUREX plant with grout, the agency said in a Wednesday meeting with state regulators and site contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Company. Personnel at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., discovered a 20-foot-long breach in the Purex tunnel May […]

No: NRC Didn’t Resume Yucca Mountain License Hearings This Week The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not resume consideration of the Energy Department’s application to license Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear waste repository, despite media reports to the contrary sparked by a routine notice published in the federal register this week. The notice that appeared […]

Ed McGinnis was appointed deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy, a promotion for the long-time DOE civil servant who had been deputy assistant secretary for international nuclear energy policy and cooperation since 2007. In his new role, which did not require Senate confirmation, McGinnis is the number-two man at the DOE office responsible for civilian […]

A least one liquid waste-related operation is ongoing at the Savannah River Site, despite the temporary halting of liquid waste processing earlier this year. At a Savannah River Site (SRS) Citizens Advisory Board meeting last week, a DOE official said the site is about halfway through its checklist on the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF): […]

The White House last week formally nominated two former National Nuclear Security Administration officials to key administration positions at the Pentagon and the Energy Department. One, Robert Hood, was nominated to be assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs. Hood was most recently vice president for government affairs at CH2M, an Energy Department contractor, and […]

Bechtel National earned just over $7 million in fees for its work building the Waste Treatment Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland Wash.: good for 71 percent of the total available for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2016. DOE grades Bechtel in two major categories: the less-quantifiable project management category, which […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in the final steps of an environmental assessment that would clear the way for Centrus Energy Corp. to start shipping radioactive debris out of a shuttered, next-generation uranium-enrichment demonstration in Piketon, Ohio, an NRC spokesperson said Tuesday. NRC “is currently working on an Environmental Assessment of the environmental impacts of transporting […]

Jeff Kerridge was appointed senior vice president of business development for AECOM’s Nuclear and Environment business unit, the company announced late Tuesday. Kerridge is responsible for “implementing strategies to build the N&E business [and] have responsibility for assuring quality and consistency in business development pursuits,” Los Angeles-based AECOM wrote in a press release. Kerridge was […]

James Voss will step down as managing director of Waste Management Symposia at the end of June. The organization helms the annual Waste Management Symposium, which is widely considered a must-attend show among nuclear-cleanup experts in industry and government. Voss broke the news late Tuesday in a widely distributed email. The text of that email […]

The Donald Trump administration requested $150 million for 2018 across the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart DOE’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a nuclear waste repository. The $120 million of funding within DOE encompasses $110 million for Yucca licensing and $10 million for an interim storage […]

The manager in charge of the effort to fix a Savannah River Site evaporator pot that unexpectedly sprung a leak halfway through its 30-year design life is 95-percent sure the vessel will be up and running again by Dec. 31. The 3H Evaporator Pot, which last year leaked some 3,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, is […]

The Department of Energy’s latest budget request would reduce spending at the Hanford Site in Washington state by $118.8 from current levels. The total budget would be $2.22 billion for fiscal 2018, not including security costs. The proposal would add about $5 million to the budget of Hanford’s Office of River Protection, for a total […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is in line to receive $1.45 billion in fiscal 2018 for its environmental management (EM) mission, much of which would fund liquid waste cleanup, according to President Donald Trump’s budget proposal this week. The request is $111 million more than the South Carolina site received for EM work […]

Radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s double-shell Tank AZ-101 does not appear to be from a leak within the tank, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. A leak was considered possible when a robotic crawler pulled out of the annulus, or space between the tank’s two shells, on May 18 was found to be contaminated […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to review monitoring and maintenance of aging facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state after the May 9 discovery of a breached waste tunnel. “Fortunately, the collapse did not result in any injuries and no measureable release of […]

Savannah River Site security has been given direction to take appropriate action if a drone flying above the site presents a threat, an official at the South Carolina facility told a local advisory board on Monday. “Protocols are in place for engagement and I don’t really want to say anything else about that,” according to […]