Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

Energy Department contractors Bechtel and AECOM will pay a combined $125 million to settle allegations that they spent federal dollars on non-nuclear-certified parts and services for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the U.S. Justice Department announced late Nov. 23. Bechtel’s payment also covers claims that it improperly used federal funds for lobbying purposes. […]

This week, as the Energy Department weighed decisions that will determine if the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) reopens in 2016, news broke that New Mexico’s U.S. senators believe the facility needs tens of millions of dollars more than expected to safely resume nuclear waste disposal. After numerous setbacks this year, DOE and site contractor […]

The Department of Energy said Thursday it has issued a $39.1 million, five-year contract to e-Management Consultants for information technology services at Office of Environmental Management (EM) headquarters. The Silver Spring, Md.-based company, which specializes in IT services for government, beat 12 other bidders, according to a DOE press release. The contract covers a wide […]

A dozen workers this week reported symptoms or suspicious odors that could be related to chemical vapors from waste stored at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Thursday afternoon, three workers reported a suspicious ammonia-like odor outside a facility used to switch out empty air bottles for full containers to use with […]

President Barack Obama this week nominated nuclear energy industry veteran Bruce Hamilton to serve a full term on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board member. Hamilton joined the board in August 2015, replacing Ken Mossman, who has since died. If approved by the Senate, he would serve a full term of five years. Hamilton was president […]

A recently released report from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Inspector General (IG) identifies seven significant management challenges facing the agency in fiscal 2017. They are: financial assistance and contract management; cybersecurity; environmental cleanup; nuclear waste disposal; safeguards and security; stockpile stewardship; and infrastructure modernization. All but one of these categories were previously identified […]

A local advisory board wants the Department of Energy to expedite processing of aluminum-clad spent nuclear fuel (SNF) stocks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. During its bimonthly meeting on Nov. 15, the SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) approved a recommendation asking DOE to “accelerate plans and decisions to process its entire inventory of aluminum-clad SNF […]

Hanford Site tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) has reached a settlement agreement with the Department of Energy Office of Enforcement over a subcontractor worker who fell into an abandoned septic system. The company has agreed to pay $45,000 and take actions to improve safety, including with its subcontractors, according to a consent […]

Washington state and its co-plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit over chemical vapor protections for workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site are asking for five more months to prepare for trial. The proposed delay would move the trial from Sept 18, 2017, to Feb. 19, 2018. The current case schedule cannot be met, in […]

South Carolina wants a U.S. District Court judge to reconsider her recent opinion that she has no jurisdiction to rule on the $100 million the state is seeking in its lawsuit over disposition of DOE plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. State Attorney General Alan Wilson sued the Energy Department, Energy Secretary […]