Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Energy Department is still looking to restrict airborne drones from flying above the Savannah River Site and other “sensitive” facilities, but has not yet filed a request with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). From June 19 to July 22, SRS employees reported 12 drone sightings over key areas of the site. These included: the Mixed […]

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) has resumed work to empty waste from Hanford Site Tank AY-102 as it faces a March 4, 2017, retrieval deadline under a settlement agreement with Washington state. The Department of Energy’s Hanford tank farm contractor halted work on the tank leaking waste between its two shells this spring to change out […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not be published next week in observance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017.

Cartridge filters performed within an acceptable range in testing of their potential use to protect workers against chemical vapors from radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a preliminary evaluation of the trial. However, Stoneturn Consultants, which wrote the preliminary report, said more testing is needed. Workers now are required to […]

AECOM’s contract to demolish an Energy Department experimental plutonium facility that operated in the 1950s was set to expire Wednesday, with demolition of the site’s two main buildings expected to stretch into next summer. The Energy Department was expected to extend AECOM’s deactivation, demolition, and removal of facilities contract at the Separations Research Process Unit (SPRU) […]

The site tour and pre-soliciation conference for the Department of Energy’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) technical assistance contract last week drew at least 42 attendees representing more than 30 organizations. The department on Dec. 1 issued a draft request for proposals for the contract, which would cover services for the Utah cleanup site including records […]

A new $3 billion modification for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant project makes clear the Energy Department and contractor Bechtel National intend to meet their 2022 schedule for beginning liquid-waste treatment, without closing the door on a legally authorized delay into 2023. For years, Bechtel and DOE have said the facility the company is building […]

Veolia Nuclear Solutions has completed a technology demonstration for disposal of radioactive contaminated reactive metal waste. The company demonstrated the GeoMelt In-Container Vitrification process under contract to the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL), according to a Veolia press release. The company carried out the demonstration melts in August and September of this year at a test […]

The Department of Energy announced Friday that it had given approval for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to resume waste storage operations after nearly three years. The initial waste emplacement should be carried out next month following final, limited ground control operations, DOE said. The announcement comes a week after the New […]

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 […]