Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

In a legal brief filed in federal court, Department of Energy contractors said a Pike County, Ohio man waited too long, 15 years after being diagnosed with cancer, and more than four years after a local school closed, to allege the contractors contaminated the area around the Portsmouth Site. Plaintiff Joshua Shaw blames contractors at […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has brought online the second melter at the multibillion-dollar facility designed to solidify liquid radioactive waste into a solid glass-like form, the agency said this week. DOE said in a Tuesday press release that the second 300-ton melter at Bechtel’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant has […]

New Mexico and the Department of Energy will get until July 8 to continue settlement talks on revising a 2016 consent order governing legacy waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a federal court said this week. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar issued a Monday order extending the timeline following the latest joint status […]

A federal district judge in Washington state has set a May 16 scheduling conference to start addressing pre-trial issues in a False Claims Act complaint against the Department of Energy’s Leidos-led landlord contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state. U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian scheduled the video conference to start determining issues where the […]

The Amentum-led prime at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee told a federal appeals’ court this week its COVID-19 vaccination mandate fulfilled a contractual obligation to take “reasonable precautions” to protect worker health. UCOR’s contract with DOE, awarded in July 2010, required the Amentum-Jacobs joint venture to “take all reasonable precautions to […]

Wrap: House vote sought on compensation bill; EPA updates PRAS advice; Cole to lead House Appropriations and more Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) has called on House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to set a vote on S.3853, a bill to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, before it expires June 7. The Senate […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is being asked to weigh a Government Accountability Office decision in considering litigation over a potential $45-billion liquid waste contract at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. In an April 1 decision, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained a bid protest by TLS […]

As expected, the Department of Energy said this week it plans to issue a six-month contract extension to Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services for operation of depleted uranium conversion facilities at former gaseous diffusion plants in Kentucky and Ohio. DOE’s justification for going without competitive bids said the extension would run from April 1 through Sept. […]

Potential solar project developers at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina should file an application to interconnect to the electric grid by Aug. 30, according to a slide presentation on the government’s clean power initiative. The federal government envisions Savannah River operating on 100% carbon-free electricity by 2037, according to DOE’s […]

A couple of Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites could experience the total or near-total eclipse of the sun this coming Monday, April 8. Paducah, Ky., home to DOE’s Paducah Site, is the only weapons complex cleanup site in the “totality” path, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Buffalo, N.Y., which is […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District is extending by a week, to April 11, its deadline for responses to its request for information for a small business to perform environmental remediation at the Deepwater site in New Jersey. The original response deadline was April 4 for parties interested in doing cleanup at the […]

During 2023, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board advised the Department of Energy on issues ranging from on-site transportation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to overseeing aging nuclear infrastructure across the weapons complex. Those are some highlights of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB)’s 34th Annual Report to Congress published […]

It is up to a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., to decide what comes next in an advocacy group’s lawsuit to force an additional environmental review for a hiking trail near what used to be the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats plant in Colorado. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly heard oral arguments last month […]

The cleanup prime at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee should not be forced to hand over COVID-19 vaccination data for 100 people uninvolved with litigation filed by three fired employees, the company said this week in legal papers. Plaintiffs Carlton Speer, Melana Dennis and Zachariah Duncan, terminated by Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) […]

The environmental prime at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state shipped 15 drums of sodium waste generated by old research reactors to Tennessee for treatment, the agency said this week in a press release. At the end of February, Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup shipped the mixed low-level sodium waste by semi-truck to […]

The Department of Energy’s $45-billion liquid waste contract award at the Hanford Site in Washington state has now spawned three lawsuits, two in Federal Claims Court and one in a federal appeals court. Two of those are still live wires, including a March 26 protest of DOE’s second award of the decade-spanning liquid-waste work to […]

The Department of Energy’s $8-billion-plus Office of Environmental Management is creating a new chief technology office silo and making other organizational tweaks, one of which troubles the head of the Energy Communities Alliance. The changes were announced in a staff email Thursday, viewed by Exchange Monitor, from Kelly Snyder, an Office of Environmental Management (EM) […]

April 15 is the new deadline for potential developers of carbon-free energy projects to respond to a request for qualifications at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site. Sunday March 31 was the prior deadline for responses to the request for qualifications (RFQ) announced March 1 for clean power projects of 200 MW or […]

The lone remaining plaintiff in a COVID-19 vaccination lawsuit was set to go to trial this month with the prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. In filings during March, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee confirmed an April 23 trial date for Jessica Bilyeu, after ruling her […]

The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is drafting its formal response to public comments filed on the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration field office said last week. The environmental assessment public comment period ended Feb. 20 on the upgrade project for the […]

An electric company serving New Mexico, representatives of a nearby uranium enrichment plant and various consulting, engineering and government groups showed up for the clean power information day at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant this week.  More than a dozen groups participated in Wednesday’s event at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) […]

A team led by AtkinsRéalis Nuclear was back in federal court this week arguing that the Department of Energy improperly re-awarded a $45-billion liquid-waste-cleanup contract to a BWX Technologies-led joint venture. In a new complaint with the Court of Federal Claims, Atkins-led Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance said DOE’s court-ordered re-competition of the Hanford Integrated Tank […]

The Amentum-led environmental prime at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee has until April 2 to respond to a lawsuit by a former employee who claims he was fired in 2019 because of disability and whistleblower retaliation. Lawyers for plaintiff Christopher Hicks and defendant United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) agreed to the […]

The Leidos-led landlord at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site asked a federal court in Washington state Monday to throw out litigation by the Department of Justice and a whistleblower alleging the contractor padded its fire safety bills to the government by millions of dollars. The contractor, which has a 10-year contract now worth $4 […]

A former radiation technician fired after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine told a federal appeals court last week the Department of Energy’s environmental prime at Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is not entitled to sovereign immunity. In a legal brief filed March 19, lawyers for Yolonda Riggs, told the Sixth U.S. Court of Appeals […]

New Mexico wants assurance transuranic waste, held 10 years at a commercial storage facility in Texas, won’t pose an ignition threat before signing off on shipment to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. As a result, DOE is now facing pressure from both Texas and New Mexico. The Texas attorney […]

Speed cameras will soon be installed to help curb speeding and aggressive driving along the truck route at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top local fed told county officials last week. The laboratory is “finding ways to try and better manage traffic flow,” National Nuclear Security Administration […]

The Department of Energy and contractor Bechtel National at the Hanford Site in Washington state have heated up the second melter at the vitrification plant to its operating temperature of 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. The agency announced the heat up of the second melter in a Tuesday press release, calling it a big step toward operation […]