Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

Members of the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) said they walked away with more questions than answers Tuesday following a presentation on the downblending method of plutonium disposition. Instead of using the incomplete SRS Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) to convert 34 metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium to nuclear fuel, the Obama […]

The Energy Department on Thursday released a draft solicitation for liquid waste cleanup work at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. that could be worth up to $6 billion over 10 years, including options. The deal will follow-up an eight-year, $4.1 billion deal held by incumbent Savannah River Remediation, a conglomerate led by AECOM […]

The state of Washington has picked an experienced environmental law attorney to lead the Hanford Site regulatory work at the Department of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program. Alex Smith will start work in the Richland office as program manager on April 18, replacing Jane Hedges, who retired at the end of February. Tom Tebbs will continue […]

The United States is suing the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), and Fluor Federal Services, a parent company to the contractor, for allegedly committing fraud by claiming more than $5 million in “unallowable costs” dating to 2008 when SRNS took over the contract. The U.S. is listed as […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board on Tuesday called on major Energy Department officials and local managers at a formal meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., to answer detailed questions about what they were doing to address a combination of radiological waste and safety problems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The witnesses, who have not […]

A story in the March 11 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor [“Draft Savannah River Site Solicitation Leads EM Procurement Blitz”] should have said DOE has so far started preparing a solicitation for only one of the three major contracts managed by the Hanford Site’s Office of River Protection: the tank operations contract now held by Washington River […]

The Hanford Site’s Richland Operations Office estimates it needs a budget of $1.015 million in fiscal 2018 to meet Tri-Party Agreement and other regulatory requirements for the ongoing cleanup of the former plutonium production installation in Washington state. That would be an increase of more than $200 million above the Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 request, […]

The prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., this week played down concerns raised by an internal Energy Department watchdog regarding the transuranic waste storage site’s interim ventilation system (IVS) — a crucial upgrade required to resume waste storage at the underground facility. On March 16, DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) […]

In response to questions about use of an old reactor facility on the federal government’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, the Department of Energy confirmed that classified activities associated with nonproliferation have been taking place at the ridge-top site. Claire Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the DOE site office at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said, “the […]

A memo from the Sandia National Laboratories posted to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) website offers more, if not new, details about the Energy Department’s dismissal of a consulting firm’s finding that plutonium stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) could go critical in the distant future. The two-page, number-laden memo, dated Feb. […]