Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Two more workers were checked for possible exposure to chemical vapors at the Hanford Site in Washington state this week, bringing the total in recent months to 52. The 52 workers received medical checks because they had respiratory symptoms, smelled a suspicious odor, or were in the vicinity of suspected chemical vapors. This week two […]

Once disposal resumes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in early 2017, the Energy Department’s transuranic logjam will unclog at a rate of about five shipments per week, DOE told motor carriers earlier this month in a question and answer session about the agency’s next waste-transportation contract. “It is estimated that once shipping resumes, […]

After laying off of 123 workers in January at the Savannah River Site, Parsons, the Department of Energy facility’s salt waste contractor, laid off an additional 200 workers since February en route to completing construction of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). Parsons still has a multiyear plan for work at SRS and hopes to […]

A Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office assessment released Wednesday raised questions about hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs claimed by URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the DOE cleanup manager for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. It also cited the contractor for not performing any cost-allowability audits for subcontractor work that totaled more than […]

The tank farm contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site has launched a web page with data on chemical vapor monitoring as part of a push to make more information readily available to workers and the public, said officials with Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) on Monday. Better communication on vapors from waste in […]

The Tri-Party agencies have approved extending milestones for much of the central Hanford Site cleanup work under the Department of Energy Richland Operations Office, but not before incorporating changes in response to public comments. The Tri-Party agencies – DOE and its regulators, the Washington state Department of Ecology, and the Environmental Protection Agency – proposed […]

The mercury cleanup at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee could cost up to $3 billion, according to an estimate in a newly released Department of Energy report. The report, which is dated February 2016, focuses on the technology plans to address the extensive mercury challenges at DOE’s Oak Ridge Reservation and the Savannah […]

The Department of Energy at the Hanford Site in Washington state has notified local counties that it may be able to pay only 20 percent of the counties’ bills for payments in lieu of taxes this year. DOE signed an agreement with the three counties that include parts of Hanford — Benton, Franklin, and Grant […]

Brendan Bechtel, great-great grandson of the founder of San Francisco-based construction giant Bechtel, will replace Bill Dudley as the company’s chief executive officer effective Sept. 1, topping a list of senior-management changes on the way for one of the biggest contractors in the Department of Energy’s nuclear complex. The company announced the changes, which will go […]

Just short of a dozen people representing nine firms showed up to a site tour and pre-solicitation conference for a follow-on transuranic waste shipping contract June 1 and 2, according to an attendee list posted online by the Department of Energy. The new Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Transportation Services contract will cover transport of […]

One leak-plugging effort is underway at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS), and another did not quite work out as planned, the agency’s prime liquid waste cleanup contractor at the facility near Aiken, S.C., told a DOE-chartered citizens group late Tuesday. Both leaks could hamper DOE’s goal to process and store this year 1.5 […]

Shipments of transuranic (TRU) waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., could resume from across the Department of Energy complex as soon as February, an official told members of a DOE-chartered citizens group Tuesday. “TRU shipments are expected to resume in February of 2017,” Jeff Bentley, general engineer with the Energy Department’s Savannah […]

It is sometimes difficult to feel the ripple of a $10 million tweak to a $30-billion appropriations bill, but at a citizens-group meeting near the Savannah River Site (SRS) this week, an executive with the Department of Energy’s prime liquid-waste contractor there painted a clear picture of how such a seemingly small change could spell […]

As part of a proposed reorganization of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), Stacy Charboneau, manager of DOE’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site, would move from Washington state to Washington, D.C., and become head of a new office to which the managers of DOE’s nine nuclear-cleanup field offices would report. Charboneau’s […]

Design changes intended to prevent an explosion at the High-Level Waste Facility under construction as part of the Waste Treatment Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., were both adequate and properly vetted, according to an agency report made public on June 3. “These issues involved concerns about RLD [Radioactive Liquid Waste Disposal] […]

WASHINGTON — After eight years of construction that cost nearly $1.3 billion, Parsons Government Services has finished building the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Now, the facility’s project manager said Wednesday, begins the really hard part. “What we’ve experienced over the last two months is a transition […]

Radiation readings that had Hanford officials checking for a possible leak in Hanford’s second oldest double shell tank have returned to normal, Mark Lindholm, president of Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), said in an update to employees as they were leaving for the Memorial Day weekend holiday Friday. Checks of the […]

A regional economic development group representing rural South Carolina counties that house DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS) may not join the state’s $100 million dollar plutonium lawsuit against the Energy Department, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The Southern Carolina Regional Development Alliance filed its motion to intervene in March, a month after the state filed […]

The Energy Department’s Inspector General on Tuesday started a review of actions taken by the agency to address worker concerns about chemical vapors at the Hanford tank farms near Richland, Wash. The DOE IG held an entrance conference with Hanford officials to discuss the scope of the review and related matters, according to a memo […]

An advisory board to the Savannah River Site wants more staffers and assessments for site work involving radioactive materials and/or criticality. The request comes in the aftermath of the safety pause on all nonessential work implemented on Sept. 11, 2015, by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the South Carolina site’s management and operations contractor. The […]

The White House’s nominee for Energy Department inspector general has replied to a long list of concerns raised by senators at her confirmation hearing last month, but with a busy legislative session ahead and a backlog of would-be government executives awaiting confirmation, it was not immediately clear how, or if, the development would hasten the […]

The Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office (RL) plans to start moving its employees out of the Federal Building in Richland, Wash., to privately owned buildings this summer. The move would put workers in the Richland Stevens Center complex, which is about 3 miles to the north and home to the Hanford Site’s other DOE […]

Kenneth R. Tarcza, a retired Army officer, has been named manager of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office in Tennessee as of May 3. He will oversee the Integrated Support Center, which provides services to multiple national laboratories and Office of Science sites. The appointment was announced Monday by the DOE’s Office of Science. […]

Even at almost $4 billion, the Department of Energy underestimates the cost of cleaning up decades worth of accumulated defense nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), New Mexico’s Environment Department said Thursday. “DOE’s lifecycle baseline estimate is $3.8 billion, which we believe to be conservative,” a spokesperson for state Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week cleared the way for the Department of Energy to ship radio-contaminated barrels that qualify as transuranic waste from the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. WIPP has been closed to new shipments of transuranic waste since an accidental […]

A proposed bureaucracy shake-up that would have the nine field-office heads at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) reporting to a new Washington-based manager remained ongoing at press time Friday, a DOE spokesperson said this week. The proposed reorganization, which would be the second for EM since 2014, seeks to streamline the agency’s roughly […]

Fluor Idaho’s five-year, $1.4-billion contract to clean up the Department of Energy’s Idaho Site officially began Wednesday, with the now-former incumbents turning over the keys to the weapons complex’s largest backlog of transuranic waste. DOE announced in February that Fluor won the ICP Core contract, which combines cleanup work previously handled by CH2M-WG Idaho, a […]

The Department of Energy and its prime contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., held firm Thursday on a mid-December restart date for the nation’s only disposal facility for the contaminated material and equipment known as transuranic waste. AECOM and BWXT-led contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) and DOE are on a […]