Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/11/2015 Mark Whitney, the No. 2 officer in the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, was the keynote speaker Wednesday at the Energy, Technology, and Environmental Business Association’s annual Business Opportunities Conference in Knoxville. He gave attendees – many of them contractors in the department’s cleanup programs – an overview […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/11/2015 Officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have known more than two years that the facility would not meet a key deadline in a fence-to-fence cleanup of radioactive and hazardous waste that their predecessors agreed to more than a decade ago under a binding court-ordered consent decree. A settlement for […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/11/2015 Bechtel National has reached at least the 80 percent mark for design, procurement, and construction of the buildings at the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant that will not deal with high-level radioactive waste, according to an update from the Department of Energy.  DOE and Washington state would like the Low-Activity […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 12/11/2015 The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) this week said it is investigating an incident in which a worker at the Separations Process Research Unit decommissioning and demolition project suffered symptoms of heat stress. The Aug. 15 event raises questions about possible “deficiencies” by contractor URS Energy & […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/11/2015 The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) has sent a letter of enforcement to Hanford Site services and infrastructure contractor Mission Support Alliance. The letter questions the contractor’s response to a May 2015 accident involving a crane rigger, but imposes no requirements on MSA. Steven Simonson, director of […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 12/11/2015 Rock salt could be less effective than believed as a subsurface container for nuclear waste, according to new research from the University of Texas at Austin. Salt beds are already used for safe holding of low-level nuclear waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and have been […]

Chris Schneidmiller WC Monitor 12/11/2015 Nuclear waste cleanup technology specialist Kurion on Tuesday announced its third acquisition in four years – Oxford Technologies, a robotic systems  maker based in the United Kingdom. Oxford Technologies provides expertise and technology for remote handling, complex plant assembly, and operations in irradiated areas. Its remote tools have been used […]

WC Monitor 12/11/2015 IN EM Workers have installed more than 5,400 steel bolts in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in the year since ground control operations resumed at the subterranean transuranic waste storage site, the Department of Energy said last week. The bolts are one element of the advancing program to increase […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/4/2015 Congress is pushing for an updated cost assessment of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility following a congressionally mandated independent review this summer that priced the project’s life-cycle expense at $51 billion. Despite controversial hearings in Congress and indications from the Department of Energy that the project is too expensive, […]

WC Monitor 12/4/2015   Hanford Richland Office Announces Staff Promotion Jeff Frey has been named assistant manager for safety and environment at the Hanford Richland Operations Office (RL), a senior executive service position. He had been serving in that position in an acting capacity. Frey previously was assistant manager for safety and environment and served […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/4/2015 The Department of Energy is preparing a fourth draft of the remedial investigation/feasibility study (RI/FS) for a new CERCLA landfill in Oak Ridge, which underscores the number of issues raised by environmental regulators and the continuing differences about the project, which DOE deems critical to finishing the environmental cleanup campaign […]

Brian Bradley WC Monitor 12/4/2015 The Department of Energy in fiscal 2015 “disallowed” costs of approximately $3.1 million to Washington Savannah River Co. (WSRC), the former Savannah River Site (SRS) contractor and a Westinghouse subsidiary, after the DOE inspector general found WSRC employees had inappropriately received severance payments under a SRS workforce restructuring, the IG […]

Brian Bradley WC Monitor 12/4/2015 There have been "significant issues" with the safety basis for the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) in Idaho, leading to “underestimating the likelihood and consequences” of some accident scenarios, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. This may have brought about inadequacies in the selection and classification of […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 12/4/2015 Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is expected to postpone the need for a new, multimillion dollar waste building by double-stacking waste-filled canisters at Glass Waste Storage Building 1 (GWSB 1). SRR is the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste contractor and is charged with constructing and using multiple facilities to remediate 36 […]

WC Monitor 12/4/2015   WIPP Receives ‘Safe Havens,’ Increasing Emergency Preparedness The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico recently received eight emergency chambers, which will be placed underground and become operational when the facility resumes full activity, according to a Nov. 24 WIPP press release. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz recently said the expected timeline […]

WC Monitor 12/4/2015   Swift & Staley Starts Paducah Infrastructure Contract Swift & Staley on Tuesday began its three-year, $138.8 million contract to provide infrastructure support at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in June announced the award of the contract, which has an additional 22-month option period and […]

WC Monitor 12/4/2015   SRNS Saves Millions on Groundwater Cleanup Through New Methods Moving away from mechanized pump-and-treat facilities to more “simple,” multiphased passive cleanup methods has reduced costs for remediation of Savannah River Site’s groundwater from $12 million per year to approximately $1 million annually, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management said last […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 11/20/2015 The Department of Energy has not yet come up with the official CERCLA “proposed plan” for its second-generation waste landfill in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which will include a period for public comments on the proposal. But the City of Oak Ridge has already prepared comments – and they are not […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 11/20/2015 Washington Closure Hanford has completed digging up most of the chromium contamination near the Columbia River at the Hanford Site, excavating down to more than 85 feet in some places and removing more than 2 million tons of tainted soil. Any remaining work, which could be required near the K […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 11/20/2015 Winds that gusted up to 70 mph this week at the Hanford Site in Washington state spread very small amounts of radioactive contamination to within 40 feet of a public highway. Washington Closure Hanford has had problems with contamination spreading from the 618-10 Burial Ground trenches since June 2014, but […]

WC Monitor 11/20/2015   WIPP EOC Conducting Performance Tests in Advance of Readiness Reviews Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Emergency Operations Center (WIPP/EOC) staff earlier this month conducted a series of “Limited Scope Performance Tests” testing the readiness of the WIPP Emergency Response Organization and the EOC, according to a Nov. 12 Energy Department announcement. “A […]

Brian Bradley WC Monitor 11/20/2015 The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is remaining mum on its latest cost estimate for cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, after New Mexico’s top environment official this week knocked DOE’s 2008 $1.2 billion estimate as “too low." The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) “and DOE need to […]

Brian Bradley WC Monitor 11/20/2015 Funding for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility is expected to be included in the final fiscal 2016 appropriations bill after President Barack Obama’s official funding request clattered its way through scrupulous Energy Department-commissioned reviews, contentious congressional negotiations, and reported private meetings between DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration brass […]

As is our annual practice, WC Monitor will not publish next week in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. The next regular issue will be in your inbox on Dec. 4. The Weapons Complex Morning Briefing will be published Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week, and we will issue bulletins should any major news break in the interim.

Staff Reports WC Monitor 11/20/2015 The Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EMSSAB) gained traction Tuesday in efforts to redirect money collected from missed cleanup milestones at Department of Energy sites back to those same cleanup projects. Eight local boards fall under the EMSSAB, including the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board (CAB). The CAB voted […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 11/20/2015 The Department of Energy is proposing to have all parts of the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant operating by 2039, but also wants a system to allow extensions for that and other milestones in the court-enforced consent decree on cleanup of the former plutonium production site. Nov. 13 was the […]

Staff Reports WC Monitor 11/20/2015 The improper storage of plutonium by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) employees resulted from a willful procedure violation by the SRNS work team, according to the Department of Energy. SRNS discovered on Sept. 3 that a group of three operators and a first-line manager stored a sample size of plutonium […]

Brian Bradley WC Monitor 11/20/2015 Depending on the results of a forthcoming month-long simulation test, the Energy Department will decide whether to change the planned course for disposing of some 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste stored in steel tanks west of Idaho Falls. “Once the simulant run is complete the Department will evaluate plant […]