Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

More than half of the transuranic waste shipments hauled away from the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in fiscal 2024 came from plutonium downblending, a DOE spokesperson said last week. In response to an inquiry from Exchange Monitor, the spokesperson said via email that 35 of the 59 transuranic waste shipments sent to DOE’s  […]

News outlets in Washington state reported Tuesday members of Hanford Guards Union Local 21, which provides an armed protective force for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, would stop work Wednesday before Thanksgiving due to expiration of their labor contract extension. The Tri-City Herald reported the guards’ union members were “locked out” due to expiration […]

Derek Merrin (R) a member of the Ohio legislature has formally conceded his race in Ohio’s 9th congressional district against Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the longest serving incumbents in congress. “The vote is we came about 2,300 votes short” after the provisional votes were counted in […]

The Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford site will begin processing non-radioactive simulant waste in ‘a few weeks,’ a site spokesperson said Monday. The non-radioactive simulant, which is still chemically hazardous, is a stand-in for the liquid radioactive waste the facility was built to solidify, according to the site. Processing the non-radioactive liquid […]

The Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative project being built at the University of South Carolina-Aiken is 85% complete, the top nuclear cleanup official for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site told a federal advisory board Monday. “It will be open for operation come the summer of 2025,” Michael Budney, who leads the Department of Energy’s Office […]

In observance of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Weapons Complex Monitor will not publish next Friday, Nov. 29. The next issue will appear on Wednesday, Nov. 27.

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 29 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste during October, according to figures posted on the facility’s public website. There were 24 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory, four from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and one from the Los Alamos National Laboratory […]

Multiple national news organizations reported Saturday President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate Chris Wright, CEO and founder of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based oilfield services company, to be the next secretary of energy. According to his Liberty biography, Wright is a self-described “tech nerd” who previously founded Pinnacle Technologies in the 1990s, a company involved in […]

Hurricane Helene gave the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management one last emergency to deal with at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina before turning over control of the property to the National Nuclear Security Administration, a cleanup manager said Monday. Hurricane Helene “made for an interesting final weekend” before the cleanup office […]

To contain the multibillion-dollar costs of cleaning up contaminated groundwater, the Department of Energy planned to implement recommendations from the Government Accountability Office by April 2027. Candice Trummel, senior advisor for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, informed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the decision in a letter appended to a GAO report released this […]

Dallas-based Jacobs Solutions this week praised the Sept. 27 completion of the spinoff of its government contracting and cyber-intelligence businesses, which leaves Jacobs and its shareholders as key owners of the new publicly-traded Amentum Holdings. The September transition, known as a Reverse Morris Trust transaction, where some assets are moved to a third party, in […]

Oak Ridge, Tenn.,-based Boston Government Services has hired Bernie Boucher as its senior vice president for business development, the company said this week. After spending 21 years in the U.S. Army, Boucher was most recently a vice president with CACI International in Reston, Va. Boucher has also worked in a business development post with Northrop […]

At least one protest was filed over the Department of Energy’s decision this month to award an Atkins-led team $2.3 billion of work at the agency’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites. A limited liability corporation called Mission Operations Alliance filed a bid protest Tuesday with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), according to an online notice. Two […]

Having lost its request for an injunction blocking public access to a hiking trail on property once part of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, Physicians for Social Responsibility wants a federal court to revise part of its earlier order. The plaintiffs assert U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly was premature in approving “the […]

Waste Control Specialists of Andrews, Texas has been awarded a Department of Energy contract worth up to $17.8 million over five years for long-term management and storage of elemental mercury. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Thursday press release Waste Control Specialists (WCS) will provide DOE with a lease-hold interest in a container […]

Feds and state regulators at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state have agreed on new steps to address leaking tanks of radioactive waste, including a new presumed leaker acknowledged in August. The steps include more leak detection and reconsidering the date for emptying a leaky tank. The deal announced this week between […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has selected Maria Mitchell-Williams as the next deputy manager of the Idaho Cleanup Project at Idaho National Laboratory. Mitchell-Williams fills the vacancy created when Mark Brown became manager of the cleanup project in March, a DOE spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday to Exchange Monitor. Mitchell-Williams, […]

More than a week after the election, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a House Appropriations Committee member who has served in congress for more than 40 years, still clung to a small lead over her GOP challenger. In Ohio’s 9th congressional district, Kaptur led with a sliver. As of deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor, with […]

Former and future president Donald Trump has had four years to mull potential cabinet picks, such as secretary of energy, during a second term and the choice could be a familiar face or a surprise. That was the assessment of a couple of contractor executives and politics-watchers who spoke to Exchange Monitor this week and […]

Earnings fell at AtkinsRéalis Group, Montreal, Canada in the 3rd quarter, which the engineering services and nuclear company attributed to “exceptional performance” numbers over the past year. AtkinsRéalis reported its financial performance in a Thursday press release, days after a joint venture it leads was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for operations and […]

A recent fire that burned large swaths of Ventura County, Calif., has not damaged the Santa Susana Field Laboratory or the portion of the site being cleaned up by the Department of Energy, a DOE spokesperson said late Friday, Nov. 8.. DOE’s Energy Technology Engineering Center, a 90-acre chunk of Santa Susana where DOE and […]

NBC News and the Associated Press projected that incumbent Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse, whose fourth congressional district borders the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, won his race over a GOP rival backed by Donald Trump. “The results from this election show the people want a results-driven leader who understands the unique challenges facing Central Washington,” […]

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted corporate defendants until Nov. 27 to file a motion for rehearing in a case involving liability for Manhattan Project radioactive waste in the St. Louis area. The appeals court granted the request Nov. 5 in litigation brought by Nikki Steiner Mazzocchio and Angela Steiner Kraus against […]

By spring, the Department of Energy and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico expect to complete overhauling an underground staging area for lifting mined salt to the surface, DOE said Tuesday. “The team is in the process of safely demolishing the old structural steel and will begin work on […]

The total value of the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Services contract awarded Friday to an Atkins-led team could reach $2.3-billion if all options are picked up, the Department of Energy said Tuesday. A notice in the Nov. 8 System for Award Management procurement tracker indicated the deal would be worth […]

A joint venture led by BWX Technologies started its transition Oct. 21 to take charge of the roughly 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical liquid waste at the Department of Energy Hanford Site in Washington state, an advisory board heard Wednesday. The 120-day transition to Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) should be […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory looked at ‘every possible alternative’ for building a powerline through Caja del Rio Plateau, the lab’s top federal manager wrote in a local newspaper over the weekend. “After years of study, debate and consultation that included the brightest minds at one of the world’s premier science and engineering laboratories, we […]