Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

With the impending ascension of former NASA hand Rex Geveden to the top spot at BWX Technologies, the Lynchburg, Va.-company has set an an outsider from the aerospace business in charge of an effort to grow the company’s legacy nuclear cleanup business with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. “We remain strongly committed to […]

Nuclear Navy vet Don Hoffman, longtime president of Excel Services Corp., in Rockville, Md., is reportedly out of the running to head the Department of Energy’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations, and Eric Knox, a former Energy Department civil servant with ties to the Yucca Mountain, is rumored to be in consideration, sources in Washington said […]

Executives with radioactive waste management specialist Perma-Fix Environmental Services on Friday acknowledged rough earnings numbers for the latest quarter and entirety of 2016. But they said the outlook is improving, particularly with an opportunity to treat large amounts of waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. “We’ve been very disappointed with […]

Advocates for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina hope President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming term will put to rest attempts to shut down the troubled project. The MFFF would be used to honor a 2000 bilateral agreement that requires the U.S. and Russia to each dispose of 34 […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not be published next week in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Look for the next edition in your inbox on Friday, Dec. 2.

A federal judge on Tuesday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to increase protections from chemical vapors for Hanford Site workers until a lawsuit is decided. Judge Thomas Rice of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington denied all three of the measures requested by Washington state, the local watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, and Plumbers and […]

The last major piece of equipment for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility arrived this week and was placed in the plant. The facility over the summer received two of the three major components of melter off-gas system. The final component of the system to arrive was the caustic scrubber manufactured by […]

A final, crunch-time review to determine if the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is ready to receive nuclear waste for the first time in nearly three years will take less time to finish than once thought, the Department of Energy announced Tuesday. The DOE-led operational readiness review that began Monday, as first reported in Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, will […]

Twenty workers at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site will swap badges to Savannah River Remediation from Parsons to ensure liquid waste treatment at the Salt Waste Processing Facility begins around 2019, as scheduled. The AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) “recently chose to hire 20 Radiological Protection Inspectors through Parsons, the SWPF [Salt Waste Processing […]

The Department of Energy has completed the amendment process for the request for proposals for the technical services contract at the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) in Tennessee, according to a notice posted Wednesday. The RFP was issued in early October, and DOE made three amendments through Nov. 15. “No further amendments to […]

Los Angeles-based construction giant AECOM wrapped up its 2016 fiscal year in the middle of a huge push for new business that includes attempted revenue grabs in legacy nuclear waste cleanup work for the U.S. Energy Department. AECOM’s Management Services division, which covers DOE legacy nuclear cleanup, had “nearly $25 billion of bids under client evaluation” as […]

A redesigned version of the large screw-like component designed to break up chunks of solid waste in the troubled Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) in Idaho will undergo testing from November to January, the Energy Department announced Thursday. The so-called augur-grinder breaks up solid waste for processing in the IWTU, which was built by former […]

Federal agencies including the Energy Department will remain funded at fiscal 2016 levels through at least the first two months of President-elect Donald Trump’s term, Republican congressional leaders decided this week. “To this end, my Committee will begin working immediately on a Continuing Resolution (CR) at the current rate of funding to extend the operations […]

After the Energy Department’s inspector general prodded the company for failing to communicate openly with its workforce, the president of Washington River Protection Solutions on Wednesday threw open his door to employees working on the waste tank farm at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state. “If you have any concerns, I invite you to share them […]

An article in the Nov. 4 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor should have said that Fluor leads Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.

The press has been abuzz this week about what, according to the common wisdom, was the surprise election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Here’s something not so surprising: All of the congressional races Weapons Complex Monitor looked at last week turned out as expected, with incumbents triumphing and the […]

The Energy Department announced Thursday it has agreed to sell depleted uranium to a company that plans to build a $1 billion uranium enrichment facility near the agency’s Paducah Site in Kentucky. The company, GE-Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), still bears the GE-Hitachi brand, despite that joint venture’s exit from the Global Laser Enrichment project earlier this […]

Nuclear cleanup veteran John Eschenberg will take charge of salt waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site for liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation, parent company AECOM announced Thursday. In his new position, Eschenberg  will “focus on Salt Waste Processing Facility integration and new technology demonstration for tank cesium removal,” AECOM spokesman […]

The official Facebook for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management has hit 1,000 likes. “Thank you to everyone who ‘likes’ EM’s national Facebook page,” the agency’s nuclear cleanup branch said on the social media site. “We recently surpassed 1,000 likes since launching our page in late May this year. We will continue to share progress […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has determined it has jurisdiction over the Mixed Waste Landfill at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, but will forgo oversight of the facility, DNFSB Chairman Joyce Connery said in an Oct. 27 letter to a nongovernmental watchdog organization. The closed landfill covers 2.6 acres at the Department of […]

Hanford Site cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. has sealed a subcontract for construction of storage containers to hold cesium and strontium capsules. Georgia-based nuclear materials services provider NAC International has received a $23 million contract to design and build 16 dry storage casks that will hold 1,936 highly radioactive cesium and strontium capsules now […]

Washington state is still waiting for Energy Department contractor Washington River Protection Solutions to show its work on an estimate that equipping workers with respirators and other gear to protect them from vapors at the Hanford Site’s waste storage tank farms would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and add years to the site’s cleanup schedule. […]

Energy Department contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership was back on the job preparing to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) only about two days after the latest rockfall in the deep underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., the agency wrote on its website late Tuesday. Workers with Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) made their way back underground Saturday, […]

Plutonium metal operations at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site resumed last month, following a yearlong suspension that started with a safety pause induced in September 2015 by facility management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS). Plutonium metal operations, in which plutonium is repackaged from its original storage container in K Area, to […]

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory technology used at the Hanford Site in Washington state this year received an R&D 100 Award, an annual contest by R&D Magazine sometimes called the “Oscars of Innovation.” The Department of Energy lab developed technology that allows scientists and engineers to remotely look at underground soil environments in real time, in […]

Centrus Energy Corp., of Bethesda, Md., is stretching out decommissioning and decontamination of the American Centrifuge Project site in Pike County, Ohio, by more than a year, cutting staff and slowing the pace of work there, the company’s chief executive said in a Thursday conference call. “The schedule of that work has changed after some […]

Nuclear waste and the billions of dollars the Energy Department spends each year to clean it up do not go away after a presidential campaign — even a grinding, vitriolic campaign like the one Donald Trump won Tuesday —and nobody knows it better than business. As common after an election as calls for unity from the president-elect […]