Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

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. […]