Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/22/2016 The Y-12 site’s Alpha-5 Building has been characterized as the “worst of the worst” of the excess facilities awaiting cleanup at Department of Energy sites around the country, and deactivation and decommissioning of the highly contaminated, highly deteriorated site is still years from happening. However, Consolidated Nuclear Security – the […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/22/2016 The Department of Energy on Thursday said it had officially determined that transuranic waste emplacement operations should begin in December of this year at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The date is set in a new integrated performance baseline measurement (PMB) approved by the DOE’s Carlsbad Field […]

The possibility of storing excess plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., coupled with increased oil and gas drilling in the area, mean the Energy Department needs to re-evaluate the safety of the world’s only open transuranic waste storage facility, according to Stanford University researchers. Those factors, along with a pair […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/22/2016 A federal judge this week combined two lawsuits filed against the Department of Energy and its Hanford Site waste storage tank farm contractor over worker protection from chemical vapors. Lawsuits were filed in September by the state of Washington and by Hanford Challenge filing jointly with Plumbers and Steamfitters Local […]

Dan Leone WC Monitor 1/22/2016 Savannah River Nuclear River Solutions (SRNS) in fiscal 2015 earned a $37.8 million fee on its Savannah River Site management and operations contract with the Energy Department, or 82 percent of what it could have earned, DOE announced late Tuesday. The company — an industry team comprised of Fluor, Honeywell […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/22/2016 Washington River Protection Solutions, the Hanford Site tank farm contractor, has received 88 percent of the award fee available for fiscal 2015, or just over $13.7 million out of $15.6 million. The fee is in addition to an award of 100 percent of the $14.4 million available as performance-based incentives […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/22/2016 Eight million tons of uranium mill tailings have been extracted from the Moab site in Utah through the Department of Energy’s Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project as of this week. That is half of the roughly 16 million tons of tailings from the former uranium ore processing site that […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/22/2016 A Hanford Fire Department employee who handled potentially contaminated vortex coolers used at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant has received a preliminary positive result for radioactive uptake. Preliminary bioassay results for eight other fire department employees were negative. Results are pending for 101 additional Hanford workers who have requested […]

WC Monitor 1/22/2016 Waste Shipments Temporarily Halted at Oak Ridge Off-site waste shipments from Oak Ridge were put on hold for a month last year after “deficiencies” were identified in the shipments made by URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager for the Tennessee facility. DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management […]

WC Monitor 1/22/2016 AT DOE Portsmouth Mission Alliance of Idaho Falls, Idaho, will provide infrastructure support services at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, under a Department of Energy contract worth up to $140 million over about five years, the agency announced Jan. 15. Under the firm-fixed-price deal, Portsmouth Mission Alliance will provide […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/15/2016 The New Mexico Environment Department on Jan. 8 signed off on revisions to monitoring of potentially dangerous materials and underground airflow levels at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The modifications to WIPP’s state hazardous waste facility permit are intended to increase the safety of workers at the […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/15/2015 The managers of the Los Alamos National Laboratory lost their $2 billion a year contact by the narrowest of margins, leaving $20 billion or so on the table. First came the news on Dec. 17 that the management contract for the Los Alamos National Laboratory would expire at the end […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/15/2016 The Department of Energy is politely pushing back against new research suggesting rock salt might not be a fully safe for underground storage of nuclear waste in New Mexico. Salt beds are used for storage of low-level nuclear waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and have been considered as […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/15/2018 Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) added more employees to its emergency preparedness staff after the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) reported last year that a lack of workers was hurting the Savannah River Site’s ability to remain ready for emergencies. The board reported similar findings for liquid waste contractor […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/15/2016 Negotiators reached a tentative agreement this week on a new contract for the Hanford Guard Union. Security forces have been working under contract extensions with Mission Support Alliance since early November. The latest extension, supplementing one that expired this week, will be good through a vote on the proposed new […]

WC Monitor 1/15/2016 Lawmakers Advocate for Funding MOX Fines Owed by DOE Congress may soon have to decide if it will appropriate money to enable the Department of Energy to pay a multi-million dollar fine to the state of South Carolina for missing a key deadline at the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication […]

WC Monitor 1/15/2016 DOE Selects WIPP Permanent Ventilation System Alternative  The Department of Energy on Dec. 23 officially selected its preferred alternative for a permanent ventilation system to be installed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) said last week. A total of 24 alternatives […]

WC Monitor 1/15/2016 Hanford Tri-Party Agreement Milestones Comment Period Extended The comment period for proposed new Tri-Party Agreement milestones for the Hanford’s Site’s Central Plateau and 300 Area has been extended again. The comment period was to end Jan. 15 under an earlier extension but now will continue to Feb. 12 at the request of […]

WC Monitor 1/15/2016 IN DOE The Department of Energy on Dec. 23 officially selected its preferred alternative for a permanent ventilation system to be installed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) said last week. A total of 24 alternatives were considered as the department […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 1/8/2016 Unlike many of the Department of Energy’s big cleanup projects, radioactivity is not the concern during preparations for demolition of the K-1037 building in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The challenge is to do the cleanup while protecting the classification issues at the 380,000-square-foot facility, where the so-called “barrier” – a key […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/8/2016 The operator of the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion (DUF6) plants at Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio, has received a contract extension of up to nine months, the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management announced in late December. BWXT Conversion Services’ contract update is worth up to $68 million. Extending […]

WC Monitor 1/8/2016 IN DOE Final preparations are being made for demolition of the former K-27 uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced. The building is the last of five structures that once enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear fuel at what is now […]

Congress was out and Washington was empty, but that didn’t stop news from breaking during our annual holiday publication break. As chronicled in the Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, here are a few stories that we’ve been following. DOE Formally Begins Nuclear Waste Storage Siting Process The Department of Energy on Monday said it is formally […]

WC Monitor 1/8/2016 Employee Found Dead at WIPP The Eddy County, N.M., Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death last month of a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant worker at the facility. Robert Staffel, 62, appears to have died of natural causes, according to a press release from Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contract operator of the transuranic […]

WC Monitor 1/8/2016 Progress Reported at SRS Defense Waste Processing Facility The Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) is quickly approaching the halfway mark in its lifetime of producing canisters filled with radioactive glass, according to SRS liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation. Last week, the DWPF poured its 4,000th canister two months […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/8/2016 Initial preparations have begun on a Department of Energy project to drill a 16,000-foot borehole in North Dakota to test the use of such formations for storage of high-level radioactive waste, lead contractor Battelle Memorial Institute said Friday. In total, the project on 20 acres of land near the city […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 1/8/2016 The new comprehensive recovery plan for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant now being finalized says with 80 percent confidence that the transuranic waste storage site will reopen for business in late 2016, a senior Department of Energy official said on Thursday. The underground facility near Carlsbad, N.M., has been closed […]