Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

PHOENIX — The Energy Department plans to release a draft solicitation for Savannah River Site liquid cleanup work worth between $1 billion and $3 billion by March 31, a senior DOE procurement official said here Wednesday. It is the first, and one of the largest, of several weapons complex cleanup solicitations and awards set for […]

PHOENIX — The Energy Department has almost finished tweaking an $11.4-billion contract with Bechtel National that will officially clear the San Francisco-based company to modify the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) to begin treating low-level nuclear waste by 2022. Conceived more than 15 years ago to turn some 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive […]

PHOENIX — Heavy equipment left over from a successful liquid-waste disposal operation at the West Valley Demonstration Project should be entombed in concrete in Texas by October, a DOE contractor said here Wednesday at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. Some 600,000 gallons of high-level liquid waste leftover from West Valley, the only U.S. site ever […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., will be able to store about five shipments of transuranic waste a month after it reopens to new shipments later this year, but the prime contractor at the underground Energy Department facility said here that number could quickly double. “We hope to get it up to […]

PHOENIX — The public could get its first look at a new proposed consent agreement governing DOE cleanup of legacy nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) near Los Alamos, N.M. on March 30, a state official said here at the 2016 Waste Management Conference. “We’re targeting March 30 for the document to go up for […]

While concerns have been raised about the proposed location of the Department of Energy’s new CERCLA landfill in Oak Ridge, Tenn., a DOE contractor is continuing to work on design of the waste-disposal facility. The department is evaluating a number of sites on the government’s Oak Ridge Reservation because of concerns raised by environmental regulators […]

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was on the defensive this week in the first two congressional hearings of the year to dive deeply into his department’s budget request for legacy nuclear cleanup in fiscal 2017, with the White House’s proposal to change a long-established strategy for disposing of 34 metric tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium taking […]

A former employee of Energy Department contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) alleged the company bilked the federal government out of $20 million by covering up a leak in the double-shelled liquid-waste Tank AY-102 at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., according to a recently unsealed court documents. In a whistleblower complaint filed under seal in 2013 in […]

The Department of Energy and its tank farm contractor met their deadline to start emptying waste from double-shell Tank AY-102 with several thousand gallons of liquid removed by Thursday afternoon. “The state is pleased with the efforts of DOE and Washington River Protection Solutions to meet the terms of the settlement agreement, even starting waste […]

The Energy Department has received two more years to come up with a plan for sending transuranic waste stored at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., to New Mexico for permanent disposal, but the waste must still be shipped out by 2030, according to a recently formalized modification to the site’s master cleanup agreement. DOE, […]