Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Two top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday requested that Energy Secretary Rick Perry re-establish the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCWRM), so that the Energy Department will again have an office dedicated solely to nuclear waste policy. Prior to its defunding in fiscal 2011, OCWRM was the DOE entity […]

The prime contractor at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina illegally fired an employee in 2014 for cooperating with a congressionally led investigation into whistleblower retaliation at the site, according to DOE’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. The quasi-judicial Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) subsequently ordered Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) […]

The Energy Department’s Cold War nuclear-cleanup budget would rise more than 5 percent in fiscal 2018 to the highest inflation-adjusted level in nearly 10 years, if a federal budget proposed Thursday by the Trump administration becomes law. The White House proposed a roughly $6.5 billion budget for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) for the budget […]

By Dennis Carr Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth (FBP) prefers to operate DOE’s Portsmouth, Ohio, site with 100 percent appropriated funds from Congress. But that has not been the reality during the last six years when up to 75 percent, currently 30 percent, of funds to support the Ohio site’s 2,000 jobs carrying out the Energy Department’s D&D […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. (CHPRC) and Mission Support Alliance expect to cut up to 300 jobs at the Hanford Site by the end of the fiscal year as two key cleanup projects near completion. CHPRC, which plans to eliminate up to 250 jobs, told workers Wednesday it expects some involuntary layoffs as part of […]

The Energy Department could soon revise an Obama administration decision that bartering government-owned uranium to pay for nuclear cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, does not harm the domestic uranium market, a March 9 regulatory filing shows. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is beginning the process to consider a new Secretarial Determination covering potential […]

Demolition has resumed on the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant, more than a month after a radiation spread was discovered on Jan. 27. In another key step forward toward demolishing the Department of Energy plant, external power was shut off on March 5. “It’s the first time in 60 years that the PFP Facility has […]

Eight members of Ohio’s delegation to the House of Representatives on Monday urged new Energy Secretary Rick Perry  to visit the department’s uranium enrichment decommissioning project at Portsmouth. This is the latest of several invitations Perry has received from lawmakers to take an up close and personal view of DOE’s cleanup of its Cold War nuclear complex. […]

The Tri-City Development Council (TRIDEC) in Washington state has selected an aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to serve as its vice president of federal programs. The vice president acts as a conduit between Hanford Site-area communities and the U.S. Congress and other officials in Washington, D.C., securing funding for the Department of Energy facility […]

Washington state’s two U.S. senators are urging new Energy Secretary Rick Perry to continue the efforts started by his predecessor to better protect Hanford Site workers from chemical vapors. “Nothing less than a complete commitment to safety at Hanford is acceptable,” Democrat Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray said Thursday in a letter to Perry. […]

The Environmental Protection Agency could clear the Energy Department to keep disposing of transuranic waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant by mid-July, according to a recent regulatory filing. Every five years, under the federal law that created the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), EPA must recertify that DOE is complying with the environmental laws governing […]

By next week, the Energy Department and Washington River Protection Solutions must let the state of Washington know if they can safely inspect the inside of the leaky double-shell tank they just emptied at the Hanford Site. On Feb. 15, DOE tank farms contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) told the Washington Department of Ecology […]

Until he joined the newly spun-off BWX Technologies in late 2015 as chief operating officer, former NASA hand Rex Geveden hadn’t had much to do with nuclear anything since supporting fast-breeder reactor research during his student days at the Argonne National Laboratory. That’s the sort of resume gap that was never likely to fly under […]

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, to eliminate “duplication and redundancy” as part of what he called a “long-overdue reorganization of our federal departments and agencies.” Trump said the cost-cutting effort would be led by Mick Mulvaney, the newly installed director of the White House […]

The Energy Department and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership have now buried most of the radioactive waste that was stranded above ground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant three years ago, clearing out much-needed storage space for waste shipments slated to arrive from other DOE sites next month. Since the department and its WIPP prime resumed waste […]

The Savannah River Site received additional time Monday for storage of transuranic (TRU) waste containers outside of regulated areas so the facility can better prepare to resume shipments of the material to the newly reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. The Department of Energy site requested, from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control […]

PHOENIX — The first three sites to ship transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will be privately operated Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas, and the Department of Energy’s Idaho and Savannah River sites, a senior DOE official said here Monday. The department has not yet decided which of those […]

Idaho officials are open to the idea of lengthening the lifespan of the Energy Department’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project past 2018, but DOE has yet to release a report detailing what such an extension might look like. The facility, which employs about 700 workers, was built more than 15 years ago to treat and […]

The U.S. senators from Washington state are calling on the Department of Energy’s inspector general to assess the safety environment at the Hanford, including investigating its third-party administrator for workers’ compensation claims. The request comes after DOE notified the administrator, Penser North America, that it would end its contract without exercising all options for extensions. […]

  Hanford Site workers next week will switch to some highly limited use of air purifying respirators in place of supplied air respirators at the Department of Energy facility’s waste storage tank farms. A joint statement Thursday informed workers that starting March 14 some entries into the AP Tank Farm would involve use of air-purified […]

Fluor’s chief operating officer is retiring at the end of this month, followed by the company’s chief financial officer before the year is over, the Texas-based Department of Energy contractor announced Wednesday. COO Peter Oosterveer has been with Fluor for 28 years in a number of positions, including as head of the company’s energy and chemicals […]

  PHOENIX — The Los Alamos National Laboratory expects next month to begin treating 60 drums that contain a combustible mix of nitrate salts and kitty litter like the one that burst open and released a small amount of radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014, officials said here Monday. The incident closed the transuranic […]

The Washington state House of Representatives last week voted 69-29 in favor of legislation that would make Hanford Site personnel more likely to be awarded workers’ compensation, but not before making a significant change to the bill. The state Senate now has its turn to consider Substitute House Bill 1723. The bill, modeled after a […]

PHOENIX — A facility needed to treat low-activity liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state will not be built until 2021 — the year before contractor Bechtel National must either prove its Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is ready to treat low-activity waste, or forfeit more than $150 million in fees, according to […]

Three Democratic Senators on Monday asked newly minted Energy Secretary Rick Perry to instate new whistleblower protections at the agency that the Trump administration delayed as part of a government-wide regulatory freeze. The whistleblower protection was part of a rule published in the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration that clarified DOE may assess civil penalties against contractors that […]

Yearly operating profit at CH2M’s Environment and Nuclear business rose 7 percent year over year to $83 million in an otherwise-tough 2016, the Englewood, Colo.-based engineering company reported this week. Gross revenue in the segment, which includes the company’s Cold War cleanup work with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, was just over $2 billion: up […]

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up on news affecting U.S. nuclear cleanup during the […]