Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Centrus Energy, of Bethesda, Md., said Thursday it has received a one-year, $25 million contract from UT-Battelle to continue the experimental uranium enrichment program known as the American Centrifuge at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The American Centrifuge project has shrunk considerably since 2015, when the Energy Department pulled the plug on an […]

The city of Santa Fe, N.M., on Sept. 16 made public a Department of Energy report that says it will take about 20 years and cost up to $4 billion for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to clean up some 5,000 cubic meters of Cold War-era nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). It […]

Cleanup of a former gaseous diffusion plant in Ohio would be underfunded by nearly $80 million on an annualized basis and layoffs will be imminent if Congress does not increase funding for the project next week, an Energy Department contractor said Thursday. The cleanup, funded under a 10-year, $2.6 billion contract with Fluor-BWXT, depends not only […]

The electrical utility building that eventually will feed power to crucial liquid waste treatment systems at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., has been tied to its permanent electrical power source in what contractor Bechtel National said in a Thursday press release is “an important step toward operations.” Though announced Thursday, Building 87, […]

A decades’ worth of cleanup work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which including options is valued at $1.7 billion, is officially out for bids, the agency’s Office of Environmental Management announced late Wednesday. The work entails cleaning up Cold War-era waste, both toxic and radioactive, scattered throughout the sprawling, 36-square-mile LANL campus. Big […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With its budget for legacy nuclear cleanup squeezed, the Energy Department thinks remediation projects across the country could benefit from a change in strategy similar to what was laid out this summer in an expansive new framework approved for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, senior agency officials said last week at a […]

A new Energy Department assessment of waste disposal practices at the Savannah River Site concluded that radiation doses are being maintained within appropriate limits and should not pose threats to the public or facility personnel. The Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) conducted the evaluation in February and March and released its findings this […]

The New Mexico Environment Department on Monday approved the Energy Department’s request to ease airflow restrictions in the deep-underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: a move the agency says will help ensure smoother waste disposal operations at the mine, once it reopens. The modification is effective Oct. 19, according to a letter Monday from Kathryn Roberts, […]

An article in the Sept. 16 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor should have said the Department of Energy is overseeing the downblending of 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium at Savannah River Site, which is scheduled to begin this month.

Possible actions to protect Hanford Site workers from chemical vapors could result in missed milestones under the Department of Energy consent decree mandate with Washington state for emptying single-shell waste storage tanks, according to a preliminary report. Kevin Smith, manager of DOE’s Office of River Protection, said in a status update last week he was […]

The state of South Carolina appears to hope a letter sent out by the Energy Department that addresses the timeline for new nuclear waste shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) will buffer the state’s argument that the federal government should continue building the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Savannah River […]

Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) has been ordered to pay $216,080 in back pay and compensation to two whistleblowers it removed from the job in 2012. The computer specialist employees had raised issues with a new electronic medical system when CSC held the Hanford Site occupational medicine contract. In 2014 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration […]

Washington River Protection Solutions has emptied the 15th of 16 waste tanks in the Hanford Site’s C Tank Farm to regulatory standards. A court-enforced consent decree deadline requires the last of the C Farm tanks to be emptied to regulatory standards by March 2024. Tank C-111 is also the 16th of Hanford’s 149 leak-prone single-shell […]

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday offered strong support for a new plutonium dilution and disposal method in place of the mixed oxide fuel program that the Obama administration is pushing to cancel, calling the latter an essentially “impossible” effort. The controversy over the MOX program will be one of the next administration’s primary challenges […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Transuranic waste has been piling up around the Energy Department’s nuclear complex since the only disposal site for such material closed in 2014, and it will continue to pile up in relative safety for at least a little while longer, senior DOE officials said here Thursday. “We’re still looking at good space […]

The Washington state Attorney General’s Office this week forcefully challenged the federal government’s request that a U.S. District Court dismiss the state lawsuit filed over worker safety at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In a motion filed in August, the Department of Justice said the state had no legal standing under the 1976 Resource […]

This month, the Energy Department will begin preparing some 6 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Downblending will begin once DOE completes an assessment of a recently completed two-month long cold run of the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) […]

A permit that will allow Energy Department contractor Bechtel National to build a facility crucial to starting solidification of Cold War-era waste in Washington state by 2022 goes out for public comment next month, the state Ecology Department announced. “Ecology plans to start a 30-day public comment period in middle October on a proposed new […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A tranche of the same kind of transuranic waste that leaked radiation into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014 could be cleaned up and ready to ship out of the Los Alamos National Laboratory next summer, a Department of Energy official said here. There are still some 60 barrels of what […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With her customary caution and courtesy, the Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official would neither confirm nor deny that her career at the agency would end when President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Asked here at the 2016 National Cleanup Workshop whether she would consider staying at DOE’s Office of […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department will award hundreds of millions of dollars of work for continued operation of depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion (DUF6) plants at the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio later this month, a senior DOE procurement official said here Wednesday. “Somebody asked me yesterday if we’re going […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) has settled a discrimination lawsuit filed against the contractor by a former employee who alleged she was denied a better job opportunity because she was Hispanic and the person who got the job was white. However, terms of the settlement were not released. Victoria Brandner sued SRNS, the Savannah River […]

Salt waste processing at the Savannah River Site is expected to increase now that one of the Department of Energy facility’s new salt solution receipt tanks (SSRT) has begun receiving waste. Earlier this month, liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation (SRR) began transferring decontaminated salt solution (DSS) to the tank, which can hold up to […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The stopgap federal budget bill expected to pass next week buys Congress more time, if not much, to sort out its differences on how much the Energy Department should spend on legacy nuclear cleanup, and where, the House’s top DOE appropriator said here Thursday. The so-called continuing resolution, or CR, would freeze spending at […]

The U.S. Department of Justice and Fluor Federal Services are at odds on whether a federal court should throw out a lawsuit that alleges Fluor and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) overcharged the federal government more than $5 million for home office expenses and other “unallowable costs” in operation of the Savannah River Site, according […]

Carlsbad, N.M., is open for nuclear business, John Heaton said proudly last week. There are a few irons in the fire — the city is all in favor of the consolidated interim nuclear waste-storage facility Holtec International wants to build outside town — but Carlsbad’s crown jewel is, of course, the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation […]

With the federal appropriations process up in the air, Ohio’s Senate delegation has asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to make sure there is enough funding in the rapidly approaching 2017 fiscal year to continue planned cleanup of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. “As the fiscal year ends, it does not appear that Congress […]

Former New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn, who retired in August after three years as the state’s main liaison on federal nuclear cleanup in the Land of Enchantment, last week rejoined the private sector as executive director of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, the Albuquerque Journal reported. The 38 year-old Flynn, who resigned […]