Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) on Monday officially exited a reduced work phase, or deliberate operations, that was implemented after the company wrapped up an operational safety pause last fall. Now, the Savannah River Site management and operations contractor is fully in enhanced operations. Work in enhanced operations is closer to normal operations, but contingencies […]

House and Senate spending bills produced this week would provide more money for legacy nuclear waste cleanup in fiscal 2017 than the White House requested, but quash administration proposals to dispose of weapon-grade plutonium in New Mexico and change the way the Department of Energy funds cleanup of former uranium enrichment sites. DOE’s Office of […]

Spending bills unveiled this week unambiguously torpedoed the White House’s plan to pay for cleanup of former uranium enrichment facilities with new mandatory spending and new fees on commercial nuclear power. The House and Senate proposals differ on how much to spend on these activities in fiscal 2017, but both chambers agreed the White House’s […]

Former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) on Monday laid into a report commissioned by the Department of Energy’s lead MOX fuel facility contractor that questioned the suitability of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant as a storage site for downblended plutonium. In a commentary sent to media outlets, Domenici charged that CB&I AREVA MOX Services is using […]

Bechtel National of San Francisco earned $8.3 million in award fees from the Energy Department for its work last year on the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. — two-thirds of the total possible award, according to a document DOE’s Office of River Protection (ORP) published Monday. Most of the money […]

The Department of Energy is considering appealing U.S. Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson’s order amending the Hanford Site consent decree, according to court documents requesting a transcript of Malouf Peterson’s closed-door discussions with a panel of three technical advisers. The federal agency is analyzing the court order and amended consent decree and believes the record of […]

Parsons said April 8 the Salt Waste Processing Facility it is building at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., received a Secretarial Department of Energy Award for Project Management Improvement on March 23. The award cites the project team’s innovative practices, which “positioned the project for the completion of construction activities ahead of the target date […]

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson wants a faster resolution and no trial in the state’s pursuit of $100 million and the removal of plutonium from the Savannah River Site – both of which are stipulations dating to 2003 when South Carolina agreed to house the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) at the Department […]

The environmental cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee has taken place over more than three decades, with much of the progress measured by improved water quality in a series of creeks and waterways – including White Oak Creek, which is the main drainage system for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. […]

Washington Closure Hanford has begun removing waste from vertically buried pipes at Hanford for the first time. Just two Hanford burial grounds, 618-10 and 618-11, used the disposal method for the pipes, called vertical pipe units. The two were saved as the last burial grounds in the river corridor for remediation because they were expected […]

Washington River Protection Solutions had removed well over a third of the sludge in the Hanford Site double-shell tank with an interior leak by midday Thursday. About 61,000 gallons of radioactive sludge had been retrieved, with an estimated 90,000 gallons remaining. Sludge retrieval got off to a slow start last month, with the Department of […]

A story in the March 17 issue of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“Hanford Master Procurement Plan Coming This Year”] should have said the Energy Department’s Office of Hanford Acquisitions oversees acquisitions for the department’s Richland Operations Office only. A story in the April 1 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor [“With Little Fanfare, Six Tons of […]

Discussions over missed deadlines and penalties at the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) have been held since November, even though the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) said in December that talks were expected to wrap up in January. Construction of the facility is expected to be completed next […]

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday she still expects the Department of Energy to pony up $100 million for missing a plutonium disposition milestone at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF). South Carolina sued the federal government on Feb. 9 because DOE had failed for more than a month to […]

The Department of Energy on Tuesday said it would this year offer another 10 bus tours of cleanup operations at the Hanford Site in Washington state, after the originally planned 15 tours were filled. The added tour dates at the former plutonium production site are Aug. 2, 3, 10, 16, 17, 24, 30, and 31, […]

One Lockheed Martin affiliate reaped more than $60 million in unallowable profits over four years under a dubiously permissible information technology subcontract with another Lockheed affiliate at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released Wednesday. The internal DOE watchdog also warned the […]

Though none would commit outright to making a run at the work, most of the major partners on the Energy Department’s main liquid-waste cleanup contract at the Savannah River Site signaled interest in bidding on billions of dollars’ worth of follow-on work at the Aiken, S.C. facility. About a week after DOE released a draft request […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico should soon move into a new phase of its more than two-year effort to reopen for business, which remains on schedule for December, officials said Thursday. The transuranic waste storage facility near Carlsbad has been closed since a fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release […]

President Barack Obama this week submitted amendments to the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2017 budget request that are intended to provide millions of dollars to help pay for a nuclear waste management settlement with the state of New Mexico. Under a deal formalized in January, DOE will fund $74 million worth of infrastructure, emergency operations, […]

A group of mostly Republican lawmakers wants to make it illegal to use federal funds to close down the unfinished, mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, according to a letter the legislators mailed to colleagues on a crucial appropriations subcommittee in March. The letter was dated March 15 and addressed to Reps. Mike […]

The Department of Energy has likely exceeded its expense estimate for building an Idaho Cleanup Project facility by $181 million, breaching the cost cap of $571 million in the wake of a mishap that shut down the plant during testing in 2012, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said Monday. The Sodium-Bearing Waste Treatment Facility (SBWTF) was built […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s underground storage site for plutonium-contaminated waste have been cleared to return to work in portions of the mine shut down in February after high levels of non-nuclear airborne contamination were found in the facility’s northwestern and southern edges. DOE announced the end of the safety pause in an online note published […]

The Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official will discuss the transition of DOE nuclear facilities from active missions to cleanup with the bipartisan House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus April 20, one of the caucus’ chairmen said in a press release. The event will be hosted by the East Tennessee Environmental Business Association (ETEBA), the Energy Facility […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth will continue cleaning up the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment facility for at least two-and-a-half more years, under a contract modification with the Energy Department that took effect this week. It is simultaneously a vote of confidence and a bit of tough talking to the conglomerate from the Energy Department, which approved a five-year […]

A revised consent order governing cleanup of legacy hazardous waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico aims to be more flexible than the original document. At the same time, it is designed to be more enforceable and focused on accomplishing the work at hand, according to state officials who have shaped the […]

The Energy Department’s decision to officially ship 6 metric tons of diluted weapon-grade plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., ultimately registered as a pot-sweetener this week as flashier nonproliferation news stole the headlines during the final Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. DOE made the decision Tuesday but did not publish […]

The Department of Energy has yet to post a 2015 award fee scorecard for its prime contractor on the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) now under construction by Bechtel National at the Hanford Site, a former plutonium production facility near Richland, Wash. Award fee determination scorecards are public-facing appraisals of a contractor’s performance at a DOE […]