Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

Washington state will remain a plaintiff in a lawsuit it brought against the Department of Energy and its Hanford Site waste storage tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), demanding better protection from chemical vapors for Hanford workers. On Thursday, Judge Thomas Rice ruled in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington against a motion […]

The Washington state Department of Ecology has fined Perma-Fix Northwest $36,400 for the improper handling of some mixed dangerous and radioactive waste apparently left by the last owner of the company’s plant in Richland. Perma-Fix purchased the facility from Pacific EcoSolutions in 2007. The plant treats, size reduces, and packages low-level radioactive and mixed waste […]

The Department of Energy has been given three more years to meet milestones for building additional caps over contaminated soil in Hanford tank farms after it became apparent the agency could not meet the project’s previously set deadlines. DOE built two waste barriers the size of football fields or larger in 2007 and 2010. Under […]

Savannah River Site Watch got the green light from Grammy Award winner Bonnie Raitt to lobby outside of her Oct. 28 concert in North Charleston, where the group collected signatures in opposition to bringing more nuclear materials to South Carolina. “Bonnie follows these nuclear waste issues and she’s very supportive of our work,” said SRS […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) on Thursday reported lower revenue and operating income in the third quarter of 2016, decreases it attributed in part to lower revenues in shipbuilding programs and lower sales volumes in some contracts. Company revenue fell 6.5 percent, to $1.68 billion, from $1.8 billion during the same quarter last year. Quarterly diluted […]

There hasn’t been much catharsis this cycle for political junkies within the Energy Department’s nuclear complex who want to see some of the lightning from the presidential race trickle down to contests that may affect them professionally. Neither Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton nor Republican candidate Donald Trump have said much about the DOE nuclear […]

Another underground rockfall prompted workers to evacuate from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) on Thursday, the Energy Department said. The collapse occurred even as WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) prepares to welcome DOE officials Nov. 14 for the final review standing in the way of reopening the deep-underground transuranic waste-storage facility, which […]

The Fluor Corp. segment that handles nuclear cleanup work for the U.S. Energy Department reported a dip in profits for the third quarter of 2016, while the construction and energy giant overall took a massive earnings hit due to a charge on a petrochemical facility that has nothing to do with the company’s DOE nuclear business. […]

The ExchangeMonitor has launched the Your Voice/Our Voice opinion space in its weekly Weapons Complex Monitor e-newsletter. If you or your company is involved with the legacy nuclear cleanup work managed by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, we want to hear from you. Send us a short letter to the editor (300 words) […]

A federal judge on Monday would not dismiss a South Carolina lawsuit seeking redress for the Energy Department’s failure to remove plutonium from the state, but she did ask the sides whether the dispute should be moved to a different court. In declining to rule on DOE’s claim that South Carolina has no standing to sue […]

In a third quarter during which it announced a major acquisition in its commercial nuclear power business, BWX Technologies, of Lynchburg, Va., essentially held steady, registering small gains in revenue amid a slight dip in profit, the company reported late Monday. Overall, BWXT posted quarterly operating income of just over $62 million, down sharply from […]