Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Two Hanford Site workers received medical checks and were released to return to work after reporting an odor in the Department of Energy facility’s central area at the start of the day shift Thursday. The workers were in the 200 East Area but more than a mile from the closest waste tank farm, according to […]

David Campbell is leaving Bechtel National for a senior management position at competitor Veolia Nuclear Solutions, Bechtel confirmed Wednesday. Campbell, who had been with Bechtel since 2012, was most recently the company’s vice president for marketing and business development. His last day at Bechtel, where he focused on environmental cleanup and nuclear security, is Feb. […]

Cold War nuclear cleanup managed by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for more than half of the federal government’s total environmental liability of $447 billion, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said this week. The cost of the remaining cleanup work across DOE’s nuclear complex was estimated at $257 billion as of […]

The Savannah River National Laboratory has opened an office in Richland, Wash., to support its work at the Hanford Site. The Department of Energy facility’s work has included leading the team of experts who produced the 2014 Hanford Tank Vapor Assessment Report and supporting the Office of River Protection plan to start treating low-activity waste […]

Four federal nuclear sites and one privately operated waste disposal facility will send a total of 128 shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) from April 2017 to January 2018, the Energy Department announced Tuesday. These will be the first waste shipments to WIPP following the February 2014 underground fire and […]

The first three technical issues that have prevented construction on key parts of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant since 2012 have been resolved, according to the Department of Energy. Work continues on five additional technical issues identified after then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu directed an in-depth look that year at possible problems at the plant. […]

The Department of Energy is taking steps to catch up lost time on demolition of the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant after an unusually cold and snowy winter delayed work by several weeks. As of Tuesday, the demolition project had lost the equivalent of 23 10-hour days this winter, or more than a month of […]

The Energy Department could develop a new mobile treatment unit to clean up more than 70 barrels of potentially explosive nuclear waste stored at a private contractor in Texas, a source in New Mexico said Tuesday. The 70 barrels, which contain a combination of plutonium-contaminated nitrate salts and organic kitty litter, represent the greater part […]

Fluor Corp.’s work at Energy Department nuclear cleanup sites in Kentucky and Ohio has enhanced the company’s reputation at the agency, the construction giant’s chief executive told investors Friday. Remediation of former gaseous diffusion plants at DOE’s Paducah and Portsmouth facilities is “proving us to be one of the DOE’s go-to contractors,” CEO David Seaton said on Fluor’s 2016 […]

After AECOM quantified a long-projected earnings gain made possible by a smaller-than-expected fine to settle alleged misuse of federal funds, the Los Angeles-based company continued pounding its war drum about the billions of dollars of bid proposals its Management Services division hopes to convert into contract wins this year. AECOM, among the biggest contractors in […]

Fluor Idaho officials say they plan to start testing again next week at the Idaho National Laboratory site’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, circulating simulated waste through the facility’s system for the first time in about nine months. The simulant run, to last 10 days, is intended to determine whether a newly designed auger grinder component […]

The Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services joint venture has started work on an Energy Department contract to process depleted uranium hexafluoride left over from Cold War uranium enrichment in Ohio and Kentucky. In late September, DOE awarded Mid-America Conversion Services a five-year, $318 million depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) treatment contract, unseating incumbent BWXT Conversion Services. Fluor […]

The Savannah River Site’s main waste processing facility will be offline for much of the year to allow for replacement of a key component. The Energy Department said on Feb. 3 that site liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is preparing to replace a melter in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), which converts […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s nuclear criticality safety program in fiscal 2016 fell short of Department of Energy requirements, but an improvement plan has been established, according to an annual nuclear criticality safety program metrics report submitted to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). The DNFSB asked DOE in February 2016 to provide a […]

The bench trial for the Hanford Site worker vapor protection lawsuit brought by Washington state and other plaintiffs will be postponed until March 5, 2018, Judge Thomas Rice ruled Monday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington. The plaintiffs and defendants jointly requested the trial be delayed more than four months from Oct. 30, 2017, […]

Earnings at engineering services firm Jacobs, a support contractor at a number of Energy Department sites, rose about 30 percent to over $60 million in its fiscal first quarter, even as revenue fell 10 percent to just under $3 billion, the company reported Wednesday. The 2017 first quarter benefited from fewer after-tax charges related to the […]

Public tours are being offered again this year at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, the shuttered facility’s cleanup contractor announced Monday. “We are pleased to continue these special tours for the public to get a close-up view of the former uranium enrichment facilities while they are being addressed under the […]

A federal judge has dismissed South Carolina’s claim seeking $100 million for the missed plutonium disposal deadline at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs on Wednesday also sent another request against the Department of Energy – for the removal of 1 metric of weapons-usable plutonium […]

A Washington state House of Representatives committee heard testimony from ill Hanford Site workers and their families on Thursday that even critics of a proposed workers’ compensation bill called compelling. But those opponents told the House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee that while they were sympathetic to the suffering of the workers who testified, House […]

Wary that his village will become known only for the pile of radioactive waste the Energy Department plans to leave behind after it cleans up the nearby Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the mayor of Piketon, Ohio, is pitching the agency on a plan to reinvent the former uranium enrichment site as a DOE technology hub. […]

At least one Energy Department rule, which would strengthen protections for whistleblowers at agency contractors, was delayed by the regulatory freeze President Donald Trump put in place last month, a DOE spokeswoman confirmed Thursday. The new rule, published by now-former President Barack Obama’s administration, clarified that DOE may assess civil penalties against contractors that retaliate against […]

Nevada’s Commission on Nuclear Projects on Tuesday finalized its biannual report to state lawmakers, which outlines an aggressive strategy in contesting potential resumption of licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The commission was established in 1985 to advise the governor and the Nevada Legislature on radioactive waste disposal activities in the state. […]

Nuclear-cleanup sites across the country might learn next week when they may resume shipping radioactively contaminated material and equipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Officials from cleanup sites overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) are expected to gather at DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office on Feb. 7-8 for […]

The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico are winnowing down the mine’s post-reopening punch list of fixes, a DOE spokesperson said Monday. After last year’s DOE-led operational readiness review, the agency identified 15 fixes for WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and the local DOE […]

A highly critical congressional report this week could open the door for Energy Secretary-designate Rick Perry to reverse the Obama administration’s finding that the Energy Department should build a deep-underground disposal site specifically for nuclear waste created by Cold War weapons programs. “DOE did not show that benefits outweighed costs in recommending to the President that the […]

Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s first term, Energy Secretary-designate Rick Perry has crept closer to confirmation in the Senate, and the president’s beachhead and transition teams are laying groundwork to bolster the budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday approved Perry’s nomination by a vote […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site is seeking approval from agency headquarters to redirect money not needed for salt waste work toward other liquid waste missions. The DOE facility in South Carolina, like the rest of the federal government, is currently being funded at fiscal 2016-enacted levels under a budgetary continuing resolution that expires […]

Fluor Idaho officials say they expect to finish retrieving transuranic waste at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project in Idaho before the end of the month. Fluor Idaho President Fred Hughes last week said the Idaho National Laboratory site cleanup contractor would finish removing the final 28 boxes, or 89 cubic meters, […]