Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Tri-City Development Council thinks the best way to spur carbon-free power at the Hanford Site in Washington state is for the Department of Energy to transfer a chunk of buffer land there to local control, a vice president with the organization, David Reeploeg, told Exchange Monitor by phone last week. Reeploeg responded to the […]

President Joe Biden requested $47.2 million for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for the 2025 fiscal year starting Oct, 1, or $5.2 million than the $42 million recently appropriated by congress for the small watchdog agency in fiscal 2024. The White House requested the $47.2 million and the equivalent of 128 full-time staff positions, […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management expects to issue at most two final solicitations between now and September, according to a quarterly notice published Wednesday. The final request for proposals (RFP) for Consolidated Technical Support Services would be released no sooner than June and the Paducah Infrastructure Support Services contract no sooner than […]

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant should have reported a Jan. 23 incident, where two miners were stuck up to 30 minutes in a waste hoist lowering them underground, to the Department of Energy’s accident reporting system, a federal safety watchdog says. “Site personnel determined that an erroneous digital signal caused a breaker to trip, resulting […]

A plaintiff who grew up within two miles of the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, filed an amended federal court complaint last week against contractors he claims violated the Price Anderson Act and caused his acute myeloid leukemia. Joshua Shaw, now in his early 50s, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008 and even […]

At least for now, the Department of Energy will not extend the April 9 proposal deadline for a solicitation for a new five-year Technical Support Services contract at the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. In a set of questions and answers posted last week, DOE turned down a questioner who asked the final request for proposals (RFP) […]

A federal district court judge in Tennessee has again refused to allow a group of more than 20 people to join a COVID-19 lawsuit filed by fired contractors at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site. U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough rejected a motion for reconsideration filed last month by prospective plaintiffs who say they […]

A 21-year-old who starts working at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state this year could have a 50-plus-year career and still retire before the former plutonium production facility is officially cleaned up. DOE currently projects, with between 50% and 80% confidence, the Hanford Site will be deemed clean sometime between 2078 and […]

The Department of Energy and its prime contractor at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant are conferring with stakeholders and generators to better define legacy transuranic waste, managers said during a public meeting Tuesday in Roswell, N.M. In addition, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) should bring online two major infrastructure projects, the ventilation system and […]

PHOENIX — Hanford Site managers in Washington state intend to have their transuranic waste program certified by the Department of Energy in fiscal 2026 and start shipping to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in 2028, a contractor official said at a conference last week. Mike Douglas, waste projects manager for Amentum-led Central […]

Merging the Hanford Site’s two field offices in Washington state will not deprioritize cleanup of millions of gallons of radioactive tank waste, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told House appropriators Wednesday. DOE has for years planned to combine Hanford’s Office of River Protection with the Richland Operations Office in 2025, the same year the site […]

The Department of Energy’s Amentum-led environmental prime at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee on Wednesday signed a new contract affecting 550 members of North America’s Building Trades Unions at the nuclear property. United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) said in a press release the project labor agreement, which covers a quarter of its 2,200-person workforce, […]

Under a settlement with the state, the Department of Energy will install portable showers at the Integrated Disposal Facility once it starts receiving canisters of glass made from radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The agreement, dated March 4 and signed by attorneys for DOE and the Washington Department of Ecology, was […]

A federal nuclear liability shield would be extended for 40 years and quadruple the value of federal indemnity for nuclear incidents outside the U.S. if a 2024 appropriations bill passed by the House Friday becomes law. The language in the appropriations package that funds the Department of Defense and several other agencies would extend the […]

Subcontractors and small businesses should have benefitted more over time from Bechtel National’s multibillion-dollar contract to build the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, DOE’s Office of Inspector General said. By self-performing so much of the work, “Bechtel reduced subcontracting opportunities for small businesses and other […]

“Better contracting, better cleanup” is the big goal in the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s new decade-long strategic vision, released this week. The cleanup branch spends about 95% of its $8-billion-plus annual budget on joint ventures and a contractor workforce of 25,000, the agency said in the 52-page document. “It remains critical that […]

PHOENIX — The Department of Energy has issued requests for qualifications at four of the initial five nuclear properties in the agency’s Cleanup to Clean Energy program, officials here said Tuesday at the Waste Management Symposia conference. As of this week, requests for qualifications (RFQ) have gone out at the Hanford Site in Washington state, […]

PHOENIX —With the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio making headway in nuclear remediation, feds and locals around the Piketon, Ohio complex are working to attract new industry, including nuclear power. That was the takeaway from a Wednesday panel discussion on the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site during the Waste Management Symposium conference. […]

The Joe Biden administration this week requested more than $8.2 billion for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2025, or $253 million less than the $8.5-billion spending package finally approved by Congress and signed by the president last weekend. The formal request, which merely provides the starting point for congressional appropriators, […]

PHOENIX—There were moments this week when Waste Management Symposia participants could mistakenly think they stumbled into an economic development conference rather than one about nuclear cleanup. While Department of Energy weapons complex sites have long been economic engines for rural, isolated communities, there was much emphasis lately on reindustrialization. If not a chicken-in-every pot, the […]

PHOENIX — The Savannah River Site could send as many as 40 shipments of diluted surplus plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2024, a manager at the Savannah River Site said here. Or maybe half that many, Lee Sims, K Area Facility Manager at Savannah River for the site’s Fluor-led prime contractor, Savannah […]

Crews have started heating up the second melter for the Department of Energy’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the agency said Wednesday. “Last year, the Hanford team successfully completed heat up of the first melter and poured the first non-radioactive test glass,” at the Waste Treatment Plant built […]

Six national laboratories will split $27.3 million from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management to help hasten cleanup of underground radioactive waste at the DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state. In a separate but related development, Congress, in a report appended to a full-year appropriations bill signed Saturday, called for briefings to lawmakers […]

PHOENIX— Contaminated old buildings at U.S. nuclear weapons sites are being torn down and, internationally, nuclear power is increasingly seen as a legitimate source of carbon-free electricity, participants in the Waste Management Symposia heard Monday. “For people familiar with EM [the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management], there is no better illustration of progress […]

PHOENIX— A maintenance outage at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which started Jan. 26, concluded Monday, a site manager said. Shipments of defense-related transuranic waste to the underground salt mine should resume Friday, March 15, Tammy Hobbes, vice president of site prime contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors said Monday […]

PHOENIX — Jeff Avery, No. 2 boss at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, said Tuesday he understands industry frustration over the slow pace of big industry procurements. “Here’s what I can tell you about some of the extended procurement experiences,” Avery told Exchange Monitor during an interview on the sidelines of the […]

Now in his second year as second-in-charge at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, Jeff Avery wants a laser focus on nuclear cleanup balanced with an eye toward doing “public good” where practical. During a 20-minute interview with Exchange Monitor on the sidelines of the Waste Management Symposia, Avery touched upon the evolving […]

The Department of Energy has scrubbed its goal to restart this month the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at Idaho National Laboratory. “This week, while performing start-up operations at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), crews identified abnormal conditions while performing testing in preparation for resuming waste processing,” DOE said in an email press release shared […]