Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Energy Department will close the southern end of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) after several ceiling collapses in the underground nuclear waste storage facility, a DOE official said Thursday. Todd Shrader, manager of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, made the bombshell announcement in the final 10 minutes of a nearly two-hour town hall meeting […]

Amid other defense waste developments at the sprawling Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a recent report from lab prime contractor Los Alamos National Security (LANS) continued what has become an annual drumbeat for moving newly generated low-level waste off-site. In its Los Alamos National Laboratory 2015 Annual Site Environmental Report, published last week, LANS […]

In the latest move in the ongoing lawsuit over disposition of Department of Energy plutonium stored in South Carolina, the federal government submitted documents on Monday demonstrating its intention to advance downblending at the Savannah River Site and to send the processed material to the soon-to-be reopened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The […]

A resident near the Hanford Site has filed a lawsuit seeking an order that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy issue or deny the Department of Energy facility’s air operating permit required by the Clean Air Act. Richland resident Bill Green said the EPA is obligated to take action after the Washington state Department of […]

The Department of Energy announced last week that it would provide $2.785 million for a five-year project to determine potential “issues of concern” for a Native American pueblo near the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Santa Clara Pueblo is one of four pueblo governments in the state that participate in a program […]

The start of a crucial contractor review required to reopen the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) to nuclear waste shipments from across the country was overshadowed this week by the second partial ceiling collapse discovered in a seven-day stretch at the deep underground salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M. So far, the Energy Department says the […]

BWX Technologies, parent of the outgoing incumbent on the Energy Department’s depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion contract, is considering whether to protest the award of a follow-on to an Atkins-led team that snatched the work away last week. The contract covers work at DOE’s former gaseous diffusion plants near Paducah, Ky., and Piketon, Ohio. BWXT […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering action against Waste Control Specialists for an apparent license violation in 2014 in which the company improperly moved some 70 waste box containers of transuranic waste between two facilities at its storage complex in Andrews, Texas. According to NRC documents, WCS moved the containers from a storage pad outside […]

The Department of Energy is seeking a contractor to provide technical support services for the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM). The five-year, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract features a $20,000 minimum value of services and a $49 million maximum, according to the request for proposals issued on Thursday. The RFP is a small business set-aside and […]

A $10.5 million grant from the Department of Energy will finally enable the University of Arkansas to move ahead with demolition of the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) facility, which has gone unused for 30 years. The funding will pay for a series of cleanup operations culminating in decommissioning and dismantlement of the facility […]

The Department of Energy last week issued two grants worth nearly $3 million for further research into deploying robots in hazardous nuclear cleanup operations. The grants to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the University of Massachusetts Lowell were provided under a program solicitation for the National Science Foundation’s National Robotics Initiative, which aims to […]

Waste Control Specialists (WCS) said Tuesday it has received permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep a potentially dangerous batch of federal transuranic waste in Andrews, Texas, for another two years. The company in June sought permission to retain custody of the improperly packaged, radioactive nitrate-salt waste from the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National […]

Just after three senators introduced a bill to tighten whistleblower protection for Energy Department employees and contractors, the agency itself released a new internal order aimed at ratcheting up those same protections without congressional action. DOE order O 221.1B, “Reporting Fraud, Waste and Abuse to the Office of Inspector General,” was approved Sept. 27, only […]

The last major activity is underway at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant before demolition starts on the facility’s large, central building and attached annexes. In late September a crane removed the topmost part of the roof of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility, a fifth and sixth floor rising above the rest of the plant. Since […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site said Friday it has begun downblending 6 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. The milestone follows DOE’s announcement on April 5 that it would downblend the material and send it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for disposal. The process of blending plutonium oxide […]

Three Democratic U.S. senators who have pushed the Energy Department to reform its whistleblower policies will introduce a bill that would expand and tighten whistleblower protection for agency and contractor personnel. Sponsored by Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and titled “Department of Energy Whistleblower Accountability Act,” the bill would […]

A 30-million-gallon reservoir for decontaminated salt waste at the Savannah River Site will be ready about seven months later than expected, but still much sooner than the Energy Department is expected to need it, a project manager with the site’s liquid waste contractor said Monday. The massive tank will be ready in May 2017, Jon […]

Only days after news of his departure from the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management leaked, Mark Whitney, the agency’s No. 2 nuclear-cleanup official, has joined AECOM, the Los Angeles-based DOE contractor announced. Whitney “has been appointed chief operating officer of AECOM’s nuclear and environment strategic business unit,” AECOM wrote in the press release. The company […]

AECOM, BWX Technologies, and Fluor Corp. all bid on a 10-year liquid waste management contract at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., that could be worth $4 billion to $6 billion, sources told Weapons Complex Monitor. The Energy Department would not authorize anyone to comment on the record for this story. […]

It was not clear this week whether Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership began a scheduled operational readiness review that is a critical choke point for reopening the nation’s only disposal facility for the radioactively contaminated material known as transuranic waste. Bill Taylor and Tim Runyon, spokesmen for the Department of […]

An Atkins-led joint venture beat out four competing bids for a five-year, $318 million Energy Department contract to operate depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion facilities at DOE’s former gaseous diffusion plants near Paducah, Ky., and Piketon, Ohio. Atkins partnered with Fluor Corp. and Westinghouse to form Mid-America Conversion Services. The companies announced their winning bid […]

Under the continuing resolution President Barack Obama signed Thursday after weeks of congressional bickering totally unrelated to nuclear programs, the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear-cleanup office is now funded at a slightly higher level than the White House requested for fiscal 2017. With the season’s only must-pass bill out of the way, Congress now adjourns until […]

Transuranic waste from the Savannah River Site (SRS) will not be certified for shipment to New Mexico for permanent disposal until at least March, the top Department of Energy official at the South Carolina facility told a citizens group this week. Earlier this year, DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office released stricter new standards for packaging and […]

CB&I AREVA MOX Services provided “misleading” information in determining how much construction of the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) will cost, and how long it will take to build the plant, according to an updated project baseline report released Sept. 23 by the Energy Department’s Office of Project Management Oversight and […]

The state of Idaho will fine the Energy Department up to $3,600 daily after today, when as of the stroke of midnight DOE will officially have blown a deadline to start treating almost 900,000 gallons of sodium-bearing liquid waste at the Idaho National Laboratory. This waste was to be processed by the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU): a so-called steam reformer […]

Congress adjourned for the week without passing a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government funded at fiscal 2016 levels until Dec. 9, leaving lawmakers only another week to put finishing touches on the bill or risk another government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) began the week with hopes that the upper chamber […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said this week it has bulked up its technical staff, bringing the headcount at the independent Energy Department watchdog up to 116. Known as DNFSB, the board comprises five civilian members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to provide independent oversight of agencies and contractors at […]