Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

A committee of the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) indicated this week it supports the Energy Department’s anticipated request to restrict airspace above agency facilities – a discussion sparked last summer after drone sightings over key areas of the South Carolina facility. The Strategic and Legacy Management Committee – one of several sub-panels […]

A $122 million waste disposal facility at the Savannah River Site is undergoing a readiness assessment and should be available for use about a year sooner than expected, the Department of Energy said Tuesday. The DOE site in South Carolina tweeted Tuesday that it is entering the final readiness assessment for Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) […]

A 60-day public comment period opened Monday on Bechtel National’s plan to start installing pipes needed to clean up the Hanford Site’s low-activity liquid radioactive waste, according to regulatory filings made public this week. If granted, the modification to the company’s permit with Washington state would allow Bechtel to install underground plumbing to transfer low-activity […]

The latest step in the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the federal government, released Wednesday, directs agencies to base their fiscal 2018 headcounts on a budget proposal that prescribes an almost 10-percent funding increase for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. The Environmental Management (EM) office, which cleans up nuclear waste created by Cold […]

WASHINGTON — As contractors and locals wait to learn how much more funding their Cold War nuclear-cleanup projects might get in fiscal 2018 under the Trump administration’s proposed budget increase for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, the head of that office on Wednesday focused ruminations about next year’s budget on work that hasn’t […]

SC&A Inc. of Vienna, Va., will help the Energy Department prepare a supplemental environmental evaluation the agency must conduct to finalize its two-phase plan to tear down a former commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in upstate New York, under a five-year contract worth nearly $17 million, including options, DOE announced late Thursday. The Contract for the West […]

South Carolina’s health department recently hit the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site with two notices, but no fines, for violations in water and emissions sampling. According to a recent site update, SRS received a notice of violation (NOV) in February from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) for “failure to obtain […]

By James Voss The 2017 Waste Management Symposia was held in early March in Phoenix. We are extremely pleased at the results and the extent of our charitable educational support. At the symposia, we awarded 21 scholarships, funded a fellowship at Gonzaga University, funded Florida International University’s participation, and awarded six scholarships to STEM teachers […]

It was not clear this week how a Canadian company’s multibillion-dollar offer to acquire engineering giant Atkins would affect the company’s work on the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations. The companies on Monday confirmed they were in talks for SNC-Lavalin Group of Montreal to acquire London-based Atkins for about $3.5 billion. The transaction would include […]

The Savannah River Site declared a potential inadequacy in the safety analysis (PISA) at a site storage facility on Feb. 24 after a lid came off a spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage can. Department of Energy SRS Manager Jack Craig said in a March 29 report that the incident occurred in L Area, a facility […]

The president of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) is resigning, but says he plans to remain involved at the Hanford Site, focusing on health and safety training. Dave Molnaa will on April 16 leave the job he has held for 12 years at HAMTC, an umbrella group for 15 unions representing workers at […]

The chairman of a House panel with jurisdiction over the Energy Department met with Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Wednesday, less than a week after requesting an investigation into whether DOE’s Office of Environmental Management is spending money efficiently. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who holds the gavel on the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, was […]

Portage Inc. earned $1.1 million of its possible $1.5 million fiscal 2016 award fee as the prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) contract. It received a “good” rating for the year, according to DOE’s latest evaluation, reflecting that grade in three performance areas: project management; tailings excavation, […]

The next technical services contract at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office in Lexington, Ky., is a five-year deal, including options, that has been set aside for eligible small-businesses, according to the draft solicitation the agency released recently. The contract is a follow-on to the roughly $50-million Portsmouth Environmental Technical Services contract held by Restoration […]

President Donald Trump’s choice for deputy energy secretary, former DOE and Capitol Hill hand and current lobbyist Dan Brouillette, is said to have been handpicked by new Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Trump gave formal notice that he intends to nominate Bouillette in a statement posted online Tuesday. The nomination had not been sent to the U.S. Senate […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) could next week accept its first shipment of transuranic waste from an Energy Department nuclear cleanup site in more than three years, a source in New Mexico said this week. DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office projected in January that WIPP would begin taking in new shipments this month, though the agency […]

A story in the March 24 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor (“DOE Office Says SRNS Retaliated Against Whistleblower,” Vol. 28, No. 12) should have said a new DOE rule intended to tighten protections for whisteblowers at contractors went into effect March 21.

The Department of Energy has applied for a 20-year renewal of the license for storage in Idaho of debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, according to documents made public Tuesday. The regulator issued the license for Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) on March 19, 1999. […]

Nearly a year after he made it, the Energy Department shot down a request from the mayor of Piketon, Ohio, to fund a third-party review of thousands of pages of documents that informed the agency’s decision to dispose of waste from uranium-enrichment cleanup at the Portsmouth Site at the facility. Piketon Mayor Billy Spencer lodged […]

  Legislation that would have made Hanford Site workers more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation has failed to pass out of a Washington state Senate committee. The deadline passed Wednesday for Senate committees to send House policy bills to the full Senate, under the Washington state Legislature’s 2017 session “cutoff calendar.” The state Senate […]

  Repairs of a key waste processing facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site remain on schedule for completion in 2017, but the work is taking a toll on short-term efforts to rid the facility of radioactive waste, officials reaffirmed Monday. In the interim, there is no liquid waste processing going on at […]

The White House’s proposed budget cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency would dramatically delay the end of nuclear cleanup at the Hanford Site, the head of Washington state’s nuclear cleanup oversight program told lawmakers Wednesday in a Capitol Hill hearing. Hanford has “historically stood out for the slow pace of cleanup,” and the pace would […]

Westinghouse Electric Co., the U.S. nuclear arm of financially imploding Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday, raising questions about the storied company’s staying-power in the nuclear decommissioning business even as it pledged continuity of operations during the reorganization. “We are focused on developing a plan of reorganization to emerge from Chapter 11 […]

HPM Corp., the Hanford occupational medical services provider at Hanford, earned 91.7 percent of the fee available in fiscal 2016, according to a notification it received from the Department of Energy last week. It earned $302,610 of the $330,000 available, according to a summary prepared by DOE. The evaluation showed a small improvement over the […]

With more of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office gone than remaining, the Energy Department’s Cold War cleanup contractors find themselves — comfortably for now — in the eye of a political storm, shepherded through a prolonged lack of permanent agency leadership by veteran DOE managers. It has been almost a month since […]

  The Hanford Site’s infamous McCluskey Room, the site of the 1976 explosion that injured worker Harold McCluskey, has been demolished. CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. workers finished the project Wednesday, making it the first section of the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) to be taken down to slab on grade. “Completing demolition on this building […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still reviewing Centrus Energy Corp.’s plans to ship radioactive waste from the canceled American Centrifuge plant in Piketon, Ohio, to the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site, throwing a wrench into the company’s plan to start moving waste by the end of March. Centrus has also managed to lop a […]