Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

By Billy Spencer, Mayor, Piketon, Ohio. Scioto County Commissioner Mike Crabtree is misinformed with respect to the Village of Piketon’s long-held position on the cleanup and redevelopment plan for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) and the need for a third-party independent assessment. He should also know that the Village of Piketon is not alone […]

Demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant might stretch beyond a Sept. 30 regulatory deadline, the manager of the Energy Department’s Richland Operations Office told a citizens group Wednesday. While there is a “high probability we can get it done by the end of this year,” the project might only be “near-done by the […]

Revenue at the BWX Technologies business focused on the Energy Department’s Cold War cleanup program rose more than 15 percent last year as part of a generally strong 2016, the company reported Monday. The Lynchburg, Va., company derives the preponderance of its revenue from its sole-source nuclear propulsion work for the U.S. Navy and reports […]

Uranium sequestration operations near the Columbia River in the Hanford Site’s 300 Area are expanding after a successful test project. Soil had earlier been excavated in places down to a depth of 15 feet in the 300 Area to remove most of the uranium that has put the groundwater at risk of contamination. The hope […]

The Savannah River Site is on pace to meet its fiscal 2017 goal to double-stack and safely store 200 canisters of treated radioactive waste, according to a site official. In October, liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) began stacking canisters of vitrified waste on top of each other in Glass Waste Storage Building 1 […]

The White House will pitch a big increase for defense spending in fiscal 2018, while other parts of the federal government will have to “do more with less,” President Donald Trump said Monday. “This defense spending increase will be offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government,” Trump said […]

While the Energy Department still has not said which of its cleanup sites will first send waste to the reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, recent correspondence between the New Mexico Environment Department and the agency shows DOE has made headway in approving shipments from three of the five sites on its shortlist. In a Feb. […]

Officials and employees on Thursday celebrated retrieving all 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste that was buried under a dirt berm at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project in Idaho. Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden attended the event, which honored AMWTP personnel whose job for the past 14 years […]

French nuclear giant AREVA, in the middle of a massive restructuring, said Wednesday it stemmed its corporate losses in 2016 and returned the segment of its business dealing with nuclear cleanup to operational profitability during the year. Overall, the company’s 2016 loss was just under $700 million, a 66-percent improvement compared with 2015’s multibillion loss. Last year, […]

The Senate on Thursday confirmed James Richard “Rick” Perry as U.S. secretary of energy, installing the former Texas governor to the government’s top nuclear weapons, waste, and energy post after an uncontroversial 62-37 vote. Perry was sworn in hours later and addressed employees at DOE headquarters for the first time today. Every Senate Republican and 10 […]

Bechtel National and the Energy Department could have saved about $2 million if they had reached an agreement to cancel orders for equipment the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) did not urgently need, the agency’s inspector general wrote in a new report. Bechtel is building the plant at the site near Richland, Wash., to treat 56 million […]