Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

For the third time in four years, the Energy Department has delayed the start-date for treating almost 1 million gallons of liquid waste at its Idaho site, the agency announced late Friday. In a press release that hit the wire around 3 p.m. Eastern time, DOE said it “notified the State of Idaho that it […]

The prime liquid-waste contractor at DOE’s Savannah River Site is still hunting for the source of a leak in the 3H Evaporator that helps make room for more liquid waste in the H-Area tank farm, a company spokesperson said Monday. Discovered in February, the leak in the evaporator pot has eluded personnel on site, who are now […]

A massive cleanup contract that would begin Oct. 1, 2017 at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) includes five years, plus a pair of options that would stretch the deal out through 2027, according to a draft solicitation DOE released late Thursday. The final value of the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract will […]

Savannah River Site officials reported Tuesday the site’s Saltstone Disposal Unit 6 (SDU 6) failed a leak test this month and now will not be finished until March – about five months later than expected, but still about a year before DOE is expected to need it, in February 2018. The unit’s concrete cell has […]

A new mobile laboratory may help Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) better protect Hanford workers from exposure to chemical vapors at the tank farms. This spring, about 50 workers at the Energy Department’s Hanford site near Richland, Wash., received medical evaluations for possible exposure to chemical vapors. All are being released to return to work. […]

It’s been clear that the demolition of the K-27 Building — the last of five gaseous diffusion plants in Oak Ridge — has been running well ahead of its schedule for an end-of-year target date, and now the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager has confirmed that the contractor expects to complete demolition in “late summer/early […]

The Energy Department and South Carolina traded barbed court filings this week in the state’s $100-million lawsuit over plutonium disposal at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, S.C. DOE still wants the suit, filed in February, thrown out of court. South Carolina still wants Judge J. Michelle Childs to forgo a trial and order […]

Against a backdrop of controversial amendments, a looming White House veto threat and the impending U.S. Memorial Day holiday, House lawmakers failed Thursday to pass the spending bill that contained the chamber’s proposed 2017 budget for the Energy Department. House members now will leave town for a week-long Memorial Day recess, after which the Republican […]

The Energy Department will shed more light next week on the role industry is playing in crafting an updated cost and schedule estimate for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction at the agency’s Savannah River Site, an agency spokesperson said Thursday. The Senate Armed Services Committee requested an update on the latest […]