Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

A news brief in the Dec. 9 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor (“At Hanford: Hanford ORP Names New Deputy Manager”) should have said Washington Closure Hanford was previously the Energy Department’s prime contractor for river-corridor cleanup at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.

  Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) received $39.2 million, or 87 percent, of its annual award fee for fiscal 2016 from the Department of Energy – a total amount earned for both its Environmental Management (EM) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) missions. The Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor could have earned up […]

A federal judge has partially dismissed claims that the Savannah River Site’s primary contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), and one of its parent companies, Fluor Federal Services (FFS), unjustly benefited from their contract with the Department of Energy. On March 18, the U.S. Department of Justice sued SRNS, the management and operations contractor for […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team this week drew a snarl from one of the Senate’s top nuclear policymakers, who vowed to keep a close eye on the incoming administration’s demand that the Energy Department provide target budget and staffing levels its national nuclear cleanup programs. “I intend to closely follow the transition process at the […]

The Hanford Advisory Board is asking the Department of Energy to increase its budget to allow more meetings, including sessions around the Pacific Northwest. The federally chartered 32-seat board is tasked with offering advice on key Hanford Site cleanup issues to DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington state Ecology Department. It includes […]

At the last minute Dec. 9, after deadline for last week’s issue of Weapons Complex Monitor, the Senate passed a stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government open and funded at fiscal 2016 levels through April 28. An earlier stopgap bill, known officially as a continuing resolution, was set to expire at midnight […]

BWXT Conversion Services fared well and Restoration Services Inc. fared better, but Fluor Federal Services hit a skid and netted only half of its latest possible award fee, according to a raft of contract scorecards released recently by the Energy Department’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. Restoration Services earned 96 percent of a possible $397,054 award fee […]

Bechtel National defended its progress on construction of the crucial Waste Treatment Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state following a Tuesday Twitter strike from a local nuclear watchdog. The sharply critical Hanford Challenge on Tuesday chided Bechtel for earning a “failing grade” on its work on the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) in […]

Western states must be given a say in any decisions to establish an interim storage facility for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel within their borders, the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) said in a new policy resolution this week. “In the event that centralized interim storage, either private or federal, is deemed necessary, no such […]

The Energy Department will not commit to reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) by Dec. 31, an agency official told local stakeholders Thursday. “Our goal, based on everything we know, continues to be December,” Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a town hall meeting webcast from Carlsbad, N.M., some 40 miles […]

French waste management group Veolia announced Wednesday that it’s consolidating its nuclear cleanup businesses into a single entity called Nuclear Solutions. Nuclear Solutions will be made up of Veolia’s Kurion, Alaron, and Asteralis businesses, which offer services in facility restoration, decommissioning, and the treatment of low-and intermediate-level radioactive waste. The entity will focus on site […]

  Testing and commissioning of the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is 36 percent complete, and the plant remains on pace to start-up by December 2018, an Energy Department official said this week. Following more than a year of high-stakes negotiations starting in September 2015, the Energy Department and the South Carolina […]

An article in the Dec. 2 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor  (“SRS Advisory Board Wants DOE to Expedite Aluminum-Clad Spent Fuel Processing,” Vol. 27, No. 46) should have said 80 high-flux isotope reactor cores that could be processed at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site are stored at the Savannah River Site.

A government shutdown loomed Friday as some Senate Democrats held hostage a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government and its Cold War nuclear cleanup work funded through late April. The House passed the so-called continuing resolution Thursday, then adjourned for the week. In the Senate, however, Democratic lawmakers led by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) […]

The Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor has been fined $17,650 for violations related to hazardous waste transport. According to an Energy Department occurrence report, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Transportation, noted violations committed by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on in a report dated Nov. […]

The Energy Department’s final review of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s recovery effort uncovered 21 punch-list items the agency’s Carlsbad Field Office and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership must address before the mine can reopen after its nearly three-year pause. In addition to those 21 so-called corrective actions, DOE prescribed 15 fixes that the local field […]

  Renee Echols, a longtime executive at nuclear services provider Perma-Fix Environmental Services, has been named president of FireWater Associates. The nearly 8-year-old Maryville, Tenn., company offers a wide range of nuclear waste management, transport, regulatory and environmental compliance, and supply chain management services, for government and commercial clients, including radioactive waste profiling, waste management […]

The Energy Department will unveil a draft plan for a new deep-geologic repository for defense nuclear waste in the coming days, an agency official said Tuesday during a presentation to a citizens group in South Carolina. “I’m talking about a deep geological repository,” DOE’s Nancy Buschman, senior adviser for defense waste disposal, told members of the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still waiting for Centrus Energy to submit a cost and schedule estimate for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration plant in Piketon, Ohio. “We expect to submit the plan in the coming weeks,” Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email Monday. Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., was to have submitted […]

Costs will soar and deadlines will go unmet at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., if workers there keep wearing gear to protect them from noxious fumes leaking from underground waste tanks, the Energy Department and its tank-farm contractor said this week. In documents published Wednesday, the AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) estimated the cost of […]

South Carolina on Monday again urged a federal judge to reconsider her finding that the U.S. District Court has no jurisdiction over monetary claims levied against the Energy Department for failing to remove plutonium from the state earlier this year, according to court papers. South Carolina sued DOE in February after the agency failed to […]

Sixteen single-shell tanks built to hold liquid radioactive waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford site near Richland, Wash., will not be closed in 2019 as once scheduled, under a tentative agreement finalized last week. These underground tanks in Hanford’s Waste Management Area C have been emptied but must still be either removed from the site, […]

The Department of Energy Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site in Washington state has named Ben Harp as deputy manager, after he served in the position on an acting basis for several weeks. He also will serve as chief operating officer for the DOE office charged with management and disposal of 56 million gallons […]

Sue Cange from the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee has been promoted to principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management at DOE headquarters in Washington, the agency announced Thursday. Cange, most recently manager for DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, has been with DOE for nearly 30 years. She succeeds Mark Whitney, who […]

By Billy Morrison Twenty-five years ago this week, the Energy Facility Contractors Group was born. After receiving the thumbs up from then-Secretary of Energy James Watkins early in 1991, a group of executives from the Department of Energy’s management and operations contractors met the first week of December 1991 to officially form EFCOG, approving a charter […]

The Washington state Ecology Department on Monday opened a 60-day public comment period for locals to weigh in on a permit modification Bechtel National and the Energy Department need to start treating radioactive waste at the Hanford Site as soon as 2022. If granted, the modification will smooth the way for Bechtel, prime contractor on the […]

Waste Control Specialists is seeking leniency from federal regulators after apparently violating its federal waste-storage permit to prevent a possible radiation release in 2014, according to an official account the company filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The 12-page account, the most detailed Waste Control Specialists (WCS) has offered publicly on the situation, is printed […]