Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Energy Department contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. on Tuesday began demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash., beginning with the south canyon airlocks of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Demolition had been slated to start Monday but was delayed by high winds. Tuesday was another windy day on the central plateau, but CH2m […]

The Tri-Party Agreement for the Hanford Site in Washington state has been amended to delete the requirement that the Department of Energy submit a 2017 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report to its state and federal regulators in January. The department has been required under the Tri-Party Agreement to prepare the report annually as […]

There is still no timetable for starting up the officially delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Department of Energy’s Idaho Site, but it will need a replacement part — which DOE has in stock — that will take up to three months to install, according to an agency briefing last week. DOE this week […]

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 […]

The Energy Department’s prime cleanup contractor on the former West Valley spent-fuel reprocessing facility in upstate New York on Wednesday shipped the first of three massive loads of contaminated vitrification equipment on its way to a private disposal facility in Texas. Lynette Bennett, a spokeswoman for CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley, confirmed Thursday the equipment […]

Fluor Federal Services has installed nine new well monitors to measure the amount of toxic trichloroethene in the groundwater at the Energy Department’s Paducah Site in Kentucky, DOE said. The nine wells will help DOE prepare for future groundwater treatment at the site, which is contaminated by the toxic industrial solvent used to clean equipment […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management unveiled a logo Tuesday morning that promotes a concept the agency calls “One EM.” The minimalist header — featuring a green mountain range and a stylized, flowing river set against the backdrop of an orange, sunswept sky — includes branding similar to the “One EM Team” concept employees of the EM […]

A small cadre of Energy Department Environmental Management personnel based at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Nevada Field Office may soon get their own private office space to insulate them from NNSA personnel at the former nuclear weapons-testing site, according to an internal DOE document. Weapons Complex Monitor obtained a copy of the undated, unsigned […]

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 […]