Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

A story in the Oct. 14 Weapons Complex Monitor (“Bechtel Looks to Cap WTP Off-Gas Installation This Fall,” Vol. 27, No. 40) should have said the melters for the Low-Activity Waste Facility Bechtel National is building for the Energy Department’s Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site were delivered to the site in 2010.

The Washington Ecology Department wants more details about a contractor estimate that requiring workers to wear supplied air respirators at the Hanford Site’s waste storage tank farm could add years and hundreds of millions of dollars to cleanup of the Cold War-era Department of Energy site, according to official correspondence published online Wednesday. Earlier this year, some […]

By Dennis Carr It was the proverbial mouse that roared: The Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio, a seemingly insignificant 1,050-acre Department of Energy uranium metals plant nestled between farmland and cow pastures just 18 miles northwest of downtown Cincinnati. It was puny by DOE standards, where sites like Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge, and […]

Dear Reader, Some things go beyond the news of the day, and some questions are too big to be answered with a snappy quote. That’s why the ExchangeMonitor is launching the “Your Voice/Our Voice” section in our widely read Weapons Complex Monitor weekly e-newsletter. If we were a newspaper, we’d call it the opinion page. […]

The Energy Department sped along with plans to build an above-ground waste storage building at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) with a public meeting on the proposed structure Thursday — a legal requirement of the agency’s WIPP operating permit that moves the facility one small step toward approval. The agency has long desired the logistical breathing space that […]

One of the Hanford Site’s longest-running cleanup projects has been completed, leaving the Columbia River better protected from contamination from carbon tetrachloride. The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed that a plume of the carcinogenic chemical in central Hanford has been cleaned up to legal standards after more than three years of monitoring to ensure that […]

CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co. said Monday it hit its goal of removing nearly 200,000 pounds of contaminants from groundwater at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in fiscal 2016. CH2M treated 2.1 billion gallons of groundwater at the facility in Washington state that has been contaminated with radionuclides and toxic chemicals left over from plutonium production […]

  Uncertainty and stress may be on the horizon for the Savannah River Site (SRS) workforce if Congress does not provide adequate and timely funding for operations at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina, SRS stakeholders said earlier this week. Congress on Sept. 29 passed a stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing […]

The Energy Department said Thursday it has marked a major milestone on cleanup of the Double Tracks plutonium dispersal site in Nevada, which after 20 years the agency has cleaned up to U.S. Air Force standards. Double Tracks, located north of DOE’s Nevada National Security Site on the Nevada Test and Training Range, was one […]

The chase to run the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina after 2018 is unofficially on after the agency on Monday released a request for information that will shape a procurement of a follow-on deal to the facility’s current $9.5-billion management and operations contract. The management and operations contract awarded in 2008 to […]

Washington River Protection Solutions has redesigned and expanded its website with information for the public and Hanford Site workers on chemical vapors at the Department of Energy facility’s waste tank farms. A team of union, professional, and management employees rebuilt hanfordvapors.com from the ground up, according to the tank farm contractor. “We are putting a […]

A federal judge recently ruled in favor of Savannah River Remediation (SRR) in a discrimination case in which a former employee alleged he was mistreated as the only white man working with several black employees. Roman Moss first alleged on Sept. 29, 2014, that he was given a “heavier workload” than his black co-workers after […]

The president of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. (CHPRC) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is taking a job with CH2M’s corporate office and will be replaced by an executive from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. John Ciucci, president of the Hanford Central Plateau contractor, announced the change in […]

The Department of Energy is keeping quiet about its role in a $50 million venture aimed at reducing the cost and time of cleaning up nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. DOE officials reported last year that waste cleanup at the site could require $25 billion more than the original estimate of roughly $65 […]

There could be more leadership changes at Energy Department sites with a CH2M Hill Co. presence, thanks to a corporate-level reorganization that has already precipitated a top-spot swap at DOE’s main solid-waste contractor for the Hanford Site in Washington state. CH2M announced the pending restructuring in a Wednesday 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange […]

After the surprise announcement that it will close part of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and sacrifice several football fields’ worth of storage space in the process, the Energy Department this week told local officials it could start pulling out of the mine’s collapsing, contaminated southern end by the end of the year. A critical first […]

By spring, the Energy Department should be ready to make safe a tranche of the same kind of potentially explosive transuranic waste that leaked radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant more than two years ago. The waste, known as inappropriately remediated nitrate salt, is currently sitting idle in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) […]

Fluor Federal Services, prime contractor for deactivation of the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, got a wag of the finger from the Energy Department over a breach of criticality safeguards last year involving a pipe containing potentially damp fissile materials, according to a document DOE posted online late Wednesday. The incident, reported to […]

Personnel working in a Hanford Site tank farm pit were contaminated with material associated with radioactive waste Tuesday morning. Six workers received specks of radioactive contamination on their skin, despite wearing protective clothing. Two additional workers were found to have contamination on their privacy clothing after their protective gear was removed. Specks of radioactive contamination […]

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee defended his administration’s use of litigation in dealing with the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site against criticism from his Republican challenger at a debate Wednesday. Inslee’s administration has litigated a reopening of the lawsuit that resulted in the 2010 consent decree that sets the terms for cleanup at Hanford as […]

With the 2016 fiscal year in the rearview mirror, Bechtel National is looking ahead to finishing this fall a key gas-treatment system needed to start liquid-waste cleanup at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site as soon as 2022. Bechtel is designing a system dubbed Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) to take the less viscous, less radioactive […]

The Department of Energy is defending its chemical vapor protections at the Hanford Site in Washington state, saying in court documents that its program not only protects workers but is being constantly updated and improved. “Plaintiffs’ claims present an unwarranted intrusion into DOE’s ongoing cleanup operations at Hanford, including the world-class worker-safety and industrial-hygiene measures […]

Hurricane Matthew’s damages at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, S.C. were largely limited to downed trees and leaky roofs, according to Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the Department of Energy facility’s management and operations contractor. Spokeswoman Barbara Smoak said site crews reported during a briefing Monday’s that about 80 trees fell across the […]

Only one of the major partners in the conglomerate that operates the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) registered for an Oct. 5 tour of the site in connection with a big legacy cleanup contract the Energy Department just put out for bids, DOE records show. According to a pretour […]

The Energy Department next week will shed more light on its procurement strategy for management and operations of the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., with the release of a request for information about the work. The request for information, the next drizzle of data in the procurement cycle after a draft statement of work […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has concluded that the contractor for the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility project in South Carolina committed two violations involving structural welding. A Sept. 28 letter from the NRC to CB&I AREVA MOX Services said the base civil penalty of $35,000 would be waived “to encourage prompt and comprehensive […]

A recent audit found that the Department of Energy has not developed a long-term strategy for operating the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon – a nuclear materials processing facility that is scheduled to remain open through 2024. The audit, conducted by the DOE Inspector General’s Office, was released on Sept. 26, and also says H […]

After two and a half hours of arguments Wednesday in a hearing over a preliminary injunction request for Hanford Site worker safety, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice said he would issue a detailed written order as promptly as he can. Plaintiffs Washington state, Hanford Challenge, and Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 have asked for […]