Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Department of Energy has completed only five of the 13 steps in a complex-wide emergency preparedness implementation plan the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recommended the department start work on more than two years ago, according to a recently published letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The letter is the latest to be made public […]

The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it has at last wrapped up a review of whether the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) nuclear waste facility complied with federal environmental regulations from 2012 to 2014. The review began a few months after the February 2014 underground fire and later, unrelated radiation release that have closed WIPP to […]

Storing transuranic waste in certain containers near the border of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) campus may be riskier than site management believes, according to a report released late Friday by the Energy Department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA). EA personnel visited the Livermore, Calif., lab’s Building 332 Plutonium Facility and Waste Storage Facility from […]

Registration is open for the ExchangeMonitor’s newly revamped Global Environmental Management Forum & Showcase, formerly the Decisionmakers’ Forum. The event, scheduled for Nov. 1-3 at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C., will offer decision makers in the nuclear industry an opportunity to discuss new markets and new technologies being developed to reduce nuclear dangers and […]

The Department of Energy would do well to reduce the number of cleanup contractors at the Hanford Site in Washington state, according to the Hanford Advisory Board. It prepared advice at its June 9 meeting intended to help DOE provide the best value for taxpayers, improve workforce safety, reduce workforce stress due to contract changes, […]

The Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site continues to live up to its billing as the most dangerous and complicated cleanup at the former plutonium production facility near Richland, Wash., with a government watchdog disclosing Wednesday some close calls involving one of the plant’s radio-contaminated glove boxes. Difficulties with the facility’s last […]

Environmental regulators, the city of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and community activists have pushed the Department of Energy to explore more alternatives before choosing a definitive site for a new CERCLA landfill for disposal of hazardous and radioactive wastes generated during cleanup projects at the Oak Ridge Reservation. The department had previously put its eggs in […]

The Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant was immediately evacuated Thursday morning when a criticality alarm sounded. Hanford officials confirmed 90 minutes later that it was a false alarm related to maintenance being conducted on the alarm system that morning. The cause of the false alarm is being investigated. The alarm is designed to warn workers […]

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 […]