Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Following up on remaining safety issues related to the hazardous waste repository at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Area G, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has announced plans to hold a public hearing in Santa Fe on March 22. In a prepared statement DNFSB Chairman Joyce Connery said, “With the upcoming wildfire season, the […]

The Energy Department said Tuesday it is taking applications for membership on the Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board, which provides citizen feedback about the agency’s ongoing nuclear operations and cleanup activities at the Nevada National Security Site. “Ideal candidates are private citizens living in communities near the [the site] who are willing to volunteer their […]

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday that he will champion a change in law that would allow the Department of Energy to contract private companies in storing nuclear waste. The move would clear the way for DOE’s search for consent-based interim sites that would house spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste now stored […]

The Plutonium Finishing Plant is another step closer to being torn down after decades of work to clean out the heavily contaminated facility at the Hanford Site in Washington state. This week the Department of Energy announced that both of the 12-foot-tall glove boxes in the plant’s main processing building had been cut up, removed, […]

An article in the Feb. 12 edition of Weapons Complex Monitor, “Hanford Liquid Cleanup OK in Budget, but Big Cuts for Other Areas Proposed,” should have said: The total cost of the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, including Bechtel’s $11.4 billion prime contract to build the facility, is $12.3 billion. The White House for 2017 requested […]

Moab uranium mill tailings remediation project contractor Portage Inc. earned 84 percent of its potential award fee for fiscal 2015, the Department of Energy said on Thursday. The $1.26 million fee came with a rating of “very good” for the year. The department’s Office of Environmental Management particularly lauded Portage’s work in recovering from a […]

With groundwater cleanup at the Energy Department’s Idaho Site progressing slower than expected, DOE is giving itself until September 2019 to test out some fixes, an agency official told members of an agency-chartered citizen group last week. That is according to slides Nicole Badrov, a senior DOE manager in Idaho, presented to the Idaho National […]

A worker at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., on Jan. 21 plunged 4 feet into an old septic tank he was attempting to dig out of the ground to clear space for plumbing that eventually will pipe liquid waste out of leaky underground waste storage tanks. The man, a subcontractor for Hanford tank-farm […]

Not yet a year removed from spinning off its power-generation business, 2015 income from continuing operations at the now-nuclear-focused BWX Technologies rose nearly 9 percent year over year in 2015, despite a profit drain associated with the loss of two big contracts in the DOE nuclear enterprise in 2014. Analysts were upbeat about the news, […]

South Carolina’s senior senator exploded at Energy Department officials on Tuesday, demanding to know why nobody has been fired for the White House’s apparent flip-flop on turning 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-usable plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear plants. “This is what’s wrong with the government!” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) shouted at National Nuclear […]

The same week non-nuclear air contamination halted recovery efforts in parts of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., Energy Department officials in Washington insisted the underground waste storage facility will be ready to reopen by December. On Wednesday, two days after WIPP prime contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) evacuated portions of the facility due […]

Remaining Hanford Costs Tagged at $107.7B The remaining cleanup costs at the Hanford Site plus some limited long-term stewardship come to $107.7 billion, according to the 2016 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report. The estimate a year ago was $110.2 billion. The report has been a requirement of the Tri-Party Agreement for the last […]

HB Line, a facility that assists the Savannah River Site’s H Canyon facility in processing nuclear materials, is expected to exit a reduced work phase next month as site contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) advances toward resumption of full normal operations. SRNS, the Savannah River Site’s management and operations contractor, self-induced an operational safety […]

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the Department of Energy to prepare a corrective action report by the third week of April after the spread of radioactive contamination was discovered at the Hanford Site following a November windstorm. Some contamination from the 618-10 Burial Ground was found across Route 4, a public road between the […]

At $189 million, the $4 million requested increase for Los Alamos National Laboratory environmental management operations for fiscal 2017 is smaller than some in the state hoped to see. Stakeholders for the Department of Energy facility, including Ryan Flynn, New Mexico environment secretary and the nuclear weapons laboratory’s principal state regulator, were hoping for a […]

A Feb. 12 story in the Weapons Complex Monitor should have said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has discussed interring 34 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., but has not formally proposed doing so. The story also should have said Moniz told reporters WIPP might begin accepting diluted plutonium shipments […]

New management has been assigned to the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant and work is being rescheduled after continuing safety problems. “Over the past few months, we’ve experienced a number of safety-related events that, while they didn’t cause any serious injury, are unacceptable,” said John Ciucci, president of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., in a […]

Industry is again girding for a policy fight over a White House proposal to partially fund legacy uranium cleanup in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee with private contributions that professional groups are calling a new tax on nuclear power. At issue is the White House’s request that Congress reauthorize industry payments, via additional charges on domestic utilities, to the Uranium […]

Defense contractor Huntington Ingalls on Thursday reported a slight drop in year-over-year net earnings for its latest quarter but a significant spike in full-year income. Fourth-quarter net income dropped from $52 million in fourth-quarter 2014 to $50 million in the three-month period ending 2015. Conversely, net income rose from $338 million for all of 2014 […]

DOE Oak Ridge Office Management in Flux At least three executive positions – including the top two – are up for grabs at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office in an unusually unsteady management situation. The situation was created by losses at the top of the organization, including the death a year ago of […]

Ohio Lawmakers Call on Feds to Restore American Centrifuge Funding The Ohio House of Representatives on Wednesday officially petitioned the federal government to restore funding the Department of Energy cut last year for a uranium enrichment centrifuge project in Ohio. In House Concurrent Resolution 30, approved with only a single dissenting vote, state lawmakers said “terminating funding […]

Action Plan Developed Following Grouting of SRS Storage Tank An interim action plan that has been developed for Tank 16 at the Savannah River Site highlights what will happen from now until a final remedial action is determined for all of the tanks in the H-Area Tank Farm Operable Unit. Tank 16 is one of […]

Final Hanford Downwinders Case Dismissal Appealed Dismissal of the final claim from the 1991 Hanford Site downwinders litigation has been appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after U.S. Disgtrict Judge William Fremming Nielsen moved to declare all claims resolved and close the case. Nielsen dismissed the claim filed by the estate of […]

The Energy Department said Thursday it will hold the first of eight public meetings on its consent-based nuclear waste siting initiative March 29 in Chicago at the University of Chicago Conference Center. In the eight meetings, DOE will “seek input from the public on designing a fair and effective process for siting the facilities needed […]

New milestones being proposed by the Tri-Party Agreement agencies for central Hanford remediation operations are unprecedented, only extending cleanup and not offering any project acceleration to balance that, according to the Hanford Advisory Board. It has sent a letter of advice to the Department of Energy and its regulators for the Hanford Site – the […]

The Energy Department has decided not to levy any civil penalties on the contractors deemed responsible for a pair of accidents — including a radiation release — that have prevented the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., from accepting new shipments of nuclear waste for the past two years. The decision came […]

AT DOE As part of a broader effort to make a dent in a roughly $20-billion shortfall for uranium cleanup, the White House in its fiscal 2017 budget plan proposed tapping into a $1.6 billion fund that has been gathering dust since 1996. The three-year drawdown of the United States Enrichment Corp. (USEC) Fund would […]