Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

About a year after the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) stood up a field office at the 70-year-old nuclear-weapons lab, the agency has launched a dedicated website for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. The Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) website is located here, […]

Following two days of debate and consideration of scores of amendments, the House of Representatives late Thursday voted 277-147 to approve its National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017. However, that vote count would not be sufficient to override a veto threatened by the White House over various measures in the legislation, including funding for […]

The Department of Energy may miss the Sept. 30 deadline to tear down the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., an agency spokesperson said late Thursday, and a new schedule is still in the works. “DOE is in discussions with regulators on a potential change to the milestone for completing […]

Battelle Energy Alliance has paid the Energy Department $60,000 to settle an electrical accident that happened last year at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a company spokesperson confirmed this week. “The DOE Office of Enforcement received the BEA-signed copy of Consent Order WCO-2016-01, and payment for the monetary remedy, on May 5, 2016,” a spokesperson […]

Industry will get its first look at the draft solicitation for a long-term, $1 billion-plus contract for legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from June 7-9, when the Department of Energy plans to host potential bidders for a tour of the 70 year-old nuclear-weapons research and development facility, along with one-on-one talks with […]

The Department of Energy has been without a permanent inspector general for nearly eight months, and it will be even longer before Susan Beard, nominated for the post by the Obama administration in April, gets her chance to be approved by the full Senate. At press time Friday, it had been more than a week since […]

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Site Office plans to negotiate a five-year extension to Battelle Memorial Institute’s contract to operate the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., rather than competing the contract. About a third of the lab’s total annual budget of close to $1 billion is for nuclear security and nonproliferation work, […]

NV5 Global said Wednesday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Dade Moeller and Associates, headquartered near the Hanford Site in Washington state. The deal is expected to become final today. Dade Moeller, founded in Richland in 1994, has held Hanford contracts since then and currently has employees working on many of Hanford’s major […]

Six weeks after introducing a draft revised consent order that will govern future hazardous waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn returned to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board (NNMCAB) on Wednesday to sound out some new ideas. While announcing he was extending the public comment period […]

URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, continues to accelerate the demolition of the K-27 uranium-enrichment facility – the last of the five gaseous diffusion plants at the site now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park – and the progress is allowing the contractor to push ahead with […]