Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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. […]

Uranium enrichment company Centrus Energy, which is closing down its work on the American Centrifuge Plant (ACP) in Piketon, Ohio, said Tuesday it still does not have a contract for the portion of that program that was supposed to continue through September at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Centrus thought it would have that work locked […]

A system used for liquid waste cleanup at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site (SRS) has sprung a leak and, if it cannot be repaired, will take years to replace, according to weekly site reports from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). SRS prime liquid cleanup contractor Savannah River Remediation discovered the leak in […]

A study prepared for the CB&I AREVA MOX Services Board of Governors states that switching from the MOX method of plutonium disposition to a downblending approach could result in a nuclear chain reaction. But the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said a criticality incident cannot result from storing downblended plutonium, and that the study isn’t […]

In The Industry Wastren-EnergX Mission Support netted a $1.4 million award fee from the Energy Department in 2015 for supporting ongoing uranium enrichment cleanup at DOE’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, the company said March 17. Wastren-EnergX Mission Support’s latest award amounts to 98 percent of the available award for 2015 on the five-year, $42 […]

A story in the March 11 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor (“Draft Savannah River Site Solicitation Leads EM Procurement Blitz”) should have said the Energy Department released a request for information in October for companies interested in taking over cleanup work managed by DOE’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site in Washington state.

A federal judge has set new consent decree milestones for tank waste management and treatment at the Hanford Site in Washington state, extending the deadline to have the Waste Treatment Plant fully operating by 14 years to 2036. The order also sets milestones for emptying waste from the 11 storage tanks under the consent decree […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration is finalizing a record of decision announcing its intent to prepare 6 metric tons of excess plutonium stored at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for eventual disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, agency chief Frank Klotz said this week. Downblending and shipments of large […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board will hold a public hearing in Santa Fe on Tuesday, March 22, to collect information on hazards related to transuranic waste stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The board has also expressed interest in the Department of Energy’s activities and plans for minimizing those hazards. Many waste […]

As the Department of Energy’s motivated cleanup team tries to stabilize some of the worst of the worst situations at excess facilities at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, a focal point appears to be the Alpha-4 facility located inside the high-security “Protected Area” of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. Besides dealing with a basement […]

In a court document released March 11, a federal judge scolded the Energy Department for trying to drag out a long-running lawsuit brought to settle cleanup deadlines for 56 million gallons of radioactive waste buried at a former plutonium production facility in Richland, Wash. The document was one of several released late last week after […]

The Energy Department’s top nuclear cleanup official on Tuesday warned lawmakers of soaring remediation costs in Washington state, and faced tough questions about the agency’s plan to find more bill payers for uranium enrichment cleanup in Kentucky and Ohio. The bombshell about escalating cleanup costs at DOE’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. — long foreseen but little discussed […]

Bechtel National has begun pouring the concrete basemat for a new facility that will do some of the work of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant’s Pretreatment Facility a decade before it is expected to be operating. To start vitrifying low-activity waste at the Waste Treatment Plant as soon as 2022, the new Effluent Management […]

PHOENIX — The operator of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina intends by the end of March to fully resume normal operations following a September 2015 safety incident that led the contractor to order a nearly company-wide suspension of work that lasted for two months. As work resumed in November, Savannah […]

The overwhelming number of excess facilities awaiting cleanup at Department of Energy facilities has been identified as one of the agency’s biggest challenges and concerns, and DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management is using $28 million – a special fund enabled by a congressional plus-up for fiscal 2016 – to reduce risks and stabilize […]

PHOENIX — Major cleanup contractors working across the Energy Department’s weapons complex bemoaned contracting trends at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management that, they say, have made it harder to justify bidding on cleanup work. “I think there’s still a strong case, but I can tell you, it’s getting more and more difficult every day,” Kenneth Camplin, vice […]

PHOENIX — Christine Gelles, the Energy Department’s acting associate deputy assistant secretary for waste management, will retire from DOE on March 18 to join consulting and marketing shop Longenecker & Associates. “I will see you next time with just a different name tag, I hope,” Gelles, a 22-year DOE veteran three steps removed in the chain […]

Longstanding efforts to reduce the cost and time of cleaning up nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site and around the entire Environmental Management (EM) complex will require mature technology, according to SRS contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and other Energy Department personnel. During a budget forum on March 3 near Aiken, S.C., a […]