Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Hanford Site contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Co. has earned 95 percent of the available fee for fiscal 2015 and a rating of “excellent,” the Department of Energy announced this week. The contractor, which is responsible for Hanford groundwater and Central Plateau cleanup, earned about $10.6 million of about $10.9 million available. The excellent rating was […]

A manager with Battelle Memorial Institute said Wednesday the company is in final discussions with multiple landowners for a potential borehole field test site in South Dakota, and organizers will hold an additional public meeting next week. After abandoning its original planned test site in North Dakota in the face of public opposition, Battelle is […]

The Savannah River Site’s two largest contractors reported recently that they are focusing on hiring more personnel as a significant number of their workforces near retirement eligibility. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the SRS management and operations contractor, and Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the site’s liquid waste contractor, both gave presentations in April to the […]

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said this week they are each considering steps to hold the Department of Energy accountable at the Hanford Site tank farms. Both visited the Hanford area Thursday, dropping hints at a press conference about what their next steps may be. Ferguson, a Democrat up […]

The story “DOE Close to Figuring Out which Excess Nuclear Facilities to Tear Down First,” [Weapons Complex Monitor, April 22] should have said DOE sub-agencies such as the National Nuclear Security Administration are responsible for maintaining facilities they no longer need for active missions until the Environmental Management office takes over those facilities for cleanup.

The contractor for the Department of Energy’s project to test the feasibility of storing nuclear waste in deep boreholes has run into more opposition, this time in South Dakota, after abandoning its original test site in North Dakota. Battelle Memorial Institute representatives met with residents and officials in Spink County, S.D., on Wednesday and Thursday to […]

With research and development efforts winding down in earnest at the American Centrifuge Plant near the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) made a plea on the Senate floor Tuesday to increase the fiscal 2017 budget for another big Pike County jobs project: an on-site waste-disposal facility. As part of the […]

In fiscal 2015, Energy Department contractor LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky nabbed about 75 percent of its possible award fee, good for just under $2.5 million in the final year of the company’s five-year remediation contract for the Paducah Site in Kentucky. LATA has been officially off the job since its contract, worth just over […]

Portage Inc. on Tuesday laid off 31 employees at the Energy Department’s Moab site in Utah, where the company recently received a follow-on contract for uranium tailings cleanup work, a local public radio station reported. The layoffs leave 80 people on the job at Moab, the station, KUER 90.1, reported. A Portage spokesperson Wednesday declined […]

Senators left Washington for a weeklong recess Friday without passing their fiscal 2017 energy and water spending bill, but the chamber’s Republican leader has vowed to try again on May 9, despite no signs that the partisan strife which prevented a floor vote this week will abate. The bill was cruising toward a vote Wednesday […]

The Department of Energy and contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership have made strides in updating safety procedures at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., but there are still “significant challenges” to surmount if the facility is to reopen in December as planned, according to a new report from the agency’s Office of Enterprise […]

The Energy Department on Thursday released a draft solicitation for a potentially 10-year cleanup contract at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, which is now undergoing deactivation by Fluor Federal Services. Fluor’s deal, worth $465 million over three years, runs out July 31, 2017, and DOE is looking for a contractor that could be in […]

The lead parent company for Savannah River Remediation (SRR), the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor, participated last week in a pre-solicitation event attended by parties interested in taking over that work once the current deal expires in June 2017. “AECOM is extremely interested in continuing our success in cleaning up SRS, specifically within the […]

The White House on Thursday announced the nomination of nuclear policy and technology consultant Gail Marcus to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Marcus would presumably replace DNFSB Vice Chairman Jessie Hill Roberson, who has been nominated to fill a vacancy on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate has yet to take action on Roberson’s […]

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) agreed this month to pay the federal government $175,000 after multiple safety incidents, including one that resulted in a pause of all nonessential work, occurred under the company’s watch. Carol Johnson, president of the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor, signed a consent order on April 22. The document […]

The Department of Energy has been tight-lipped about shipment of Consolidated Edison Uranium Solidification Project (CEUSP) materials that include a highly radioactive and fissionable U-233/U-235 mix from the Oak Ridge Reservation to the Nevada National Security Site for burial. The Department of Energy carried out extended negotiations with the state of Nevada before it began […]

A dozen workers were evaluated Thursday for possible exposure to chemical vapors during work to empty the Hanford Site double-shell tank with an interior leak and transfer the waste to a sturdier double-shell tank. Pumping to remove waste from Tank AY-102 has been stopped due to the possible vapor issues, according to the Department of […]

The second melter at the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) Defense Waste Processing Facility has now processed twice as much radioactive waste as the plant’s now-retired first melter, according to a press release issued Monday. The facility just over two decades ago began converting high-level radioactive waste stored at the Department of Energy facility in South […]

While nothing is certain in Congress, particularly in an election year, both houses have moved relatively swiftly during the current appropriations process. For the Energy Department, the House got things moving April 12, when its Appropriations energy and water subcommittee marked up a first draft of the fiscal 2017 spending legislation covering DOE. Since then, both the […]

The Senate’s proposal to pile more funding into the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site cleanup program has set the stage for a parochial tug-of-war over the agency’s fiscal 2017 legacy waste-cleanup budget, once House and Senate lawmakers gather to reconcile the differing spending bills they produced this month. The Senate’s proposed increase is for DOE’s Richland […]

Editor’s Note: DOE sub-agencies with excess facilities are required to maintain those facilities until the Environmental Management office assumes responsibility for them. An earlier version of this story said those sub-agencies were not required to pay for this maintenance. A Department of Energy report that will determine which of the agency’s excess nuclear facilities get torn down first […]

One of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s top concerns in the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex is the potential for a thermal runaway incident in Area G, the hazardous waste storage area at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. Although the risk may be somewhat mitigated by recent measures taken […]

The Energy Department and its contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico could do more to ensure their new safety procedures prevent a repeat of a 2014 radiation release blamed on an improperly packaged drum of contaminated waste, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). “The Department of Energy […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth marked a major cleanup milestone at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, taking out the final component of radio-contaminated process gas equipment from the X-326 facility, DOE said Wednesday. Fluor removed the last of more than 7,000 components on March 21, DOE said in a press release. Getting the […]

Battelle Memorial Institute, the Department of Energy contractor that recently abandoned a planned deep borehole nuclear waste storage field test in North Dakota, said Thursday that it is now considering a site in Spink County, S.D. The location would enable the company to explore nuclear waste storage methods in crystalline granite rock, according to a […]

Another senior official has departed the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as of this week. John Tapia, LANL’s acquisition service management deputy division leader, according to his LinkedIn profile, managed a staff of 150 people with an annual operating budget of $16 million. He is no longer employed by the laboratory after a […]

K-27, the last of five gaseous diffusion plants to be demolished at the government’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., complex, appears to be coming down quicker than any of its predecessors (K-25, K-29, K-31, and K-33). That may be due to lessons learned from earlier demolitions, an increasingly experienced workforce, and/or an unusual period of mild winter […]

Retrieval of waste from the Hanford Site’s oldest double-shell tank resumed Thursday after workers gained some control over the internal leak in the container. As waste was being retrieved from Tank AY-102 early Sunday morning an alarm sounded, indicating the rate of leakage within the tank had increased dramatically. The decades-old tank was being emptied […]