Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Department of Energy is taking applications until Feb. 12 for a new nuclear cleanup field office manager to replace Michael Mikolanis at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to a recent online notice. Mikolanis is leaving by March to become the top DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) executive at the […]

About a year after it released a draft of the document, the National Nuclear Security Administration published a final environmental review of its plant to dispose of dozens of tons of surplus, weapon-usable plutonium. The nuclear weapons agency published its final Surplus Plutonium Disposition Program (SPDP) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on […]

Most workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state were told to stay home Friday due to sleet and snow creating challenging driving conditions — one day after most onsite staffers were sent home early. Elsewhere in the DOE weapons complex, it appears the weather is moderating at the Oak Ridge Site […]

A virtual pre-solicitation meeting attracted 52 people representing 23 companies interested in a potential Department of Energy contract for technical services at the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The following companies had individuals who signed up to learn more about draft solicitation for Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Technical Support Services:  […]

Use of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site for carbon-free energy will not include small modular reactors, a local manager for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, told a federal advisory panel Wednesday. “Small modular reactors are not an option” for the Nevada site, “David Bowman, manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received 48 shipments of transuranic waste during December, finishing 2023 with 489 shipments, the most in a year since the facility reopened in 2017, according to DOE’s public website. The 489 shipments shattered the 2022 mark of 272 shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot […]

The Department of Energy’s landlord contractor for the Hanford Site in Washington state, earned only 35% of its subjective fee during fiscal 2023 in part because of its failure to keep on top of fire suppression system maintenance, according to a scorecard released Tuesday. That translates to $2.4 million out of a potential $8.4 million, […]

Tom Bailie, a farmer who lived in the shadow of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state and became an advocate for downwinders affected by nuclear radiation, died at age 76, the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper reported Sunday. Born in Pasco, Wash. in 1947, Bailie’s family moved soon afterward to a farm across the […]

The prime contractor of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory wants a federal judge to dismiss a long-running lawsuit by two employees, a married couple, who the contractor said balked at getting COVID-19 vaccines but suffered no real damages. The motion for summary judgment and supporting materials were filed by the management joint […]

Laura Wilkerson, the Department of Energy’s deputy manager of the Oak Ridge Site’s nuclear cleanup office, accepted the newly-created chief engineer position at the Eastern-Tennessee site, the department said Thursday. In the same press release, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said another longtime hand Erik Olds, director of communications in Washington, D.C., will succeed […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Friday signed a spending bill to keep agencies including the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management open until March 1. The Senate passed the bill 77-to-18 on Tuesday afternoon. The House followed quickly after, approving the month-and-a-half stopgap budget 314-to-108.  The measure will keep DOE and other agencies funded […]

The Department of Energy prime for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina is shopping around for subcontractors interested in building a new emergency operations center. The request for information and expressions of interest by Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions was published online Wednesday.   Responses are due by 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Feb. 5 […]

Congressional leaders on Jan. 7 announced they had reached an agreement in principle to fund the federal government for the nine months that remain in fiscal year 2024. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) agreed to limit federal spending in the fiscal year that runs through […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend its contract with CDM Smith for technical support services at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif., into August, increasing the value of the deal by $3 million. The notice announcing the justification for departure from normal competitive bidding was posted Jan. 3 in the government’s […]

The New Mexico Environment Department and the Department of Energy are getting three more months to work on reaching a new deal for legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar agreed to the extension in an order Tuesday. The magistrate judge had issued the most recent  90-day extension in […]

A joint venture of APTIM and North Wind Group failed to properly train laborers on use of a circular saw prior to a November 2022 accident, which caused a worker to lose a finger at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the agency said last week. “While cutting, a kickback occurred, which […]

In coming weeks, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will review hundreds more documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request about a new low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, according to a Jan. 5 court filing. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the […]

The Jacobs-led remediation contractor at the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York state announced this week Jason Casper is its new president and general manager, succeeding the recently-retired John Rendall. Rendall led CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley since February 2020 and worked with Department of Energy contractor CH2M, now part of Jacobs, since […]

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chair Joyce Connery repeatedly “undermined” the first board’s executive director of operations in ways “inconsistent” with federal law, according to a report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Inspector General. The 15-page report on “actions inconsistent with the delegation of functions required by the Atomic Energy Act,” and dated […]

Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups sued the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland and other federal agencies Monday, claiming radioactive contaminants still linger along the former grounds of the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado. “Although this facility is no longer in operation, the radioactive contaminants, […]

This week the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved construction of a near-surface disposal facility at the Chalk River Laboratories site in Deep River, Ontario after finding the facility would not cause significant ill effects to a nearby river or traditional land of indigenous peoples. The quasi-judicial tribunal announced the decision in a Jan. 9 press […]

The final solicitation for a new remediation contract at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, potentially worth $3 billion over a decade, was issued Thursday by the Department of Energy. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the request for proposals (RFP) for what it calls Phase 1B cleanup in a press […]

Over the winter holidays, the Department of Energy revealed it will raise the value of the $4-billion landlord contract held by Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions at the Hanford Site in Washington state to more than $5.3 billion. Without the modification the current contract ceiling “is insufficient to enable the contractor to continue full operations […]

Following a 60-day transition, Virginia-based Inomedic Health Applications took over Monday as the new occupational medical services contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, an agency spokesperson confirmed Wednesday. The contractor will provide medical services to Hanford’s 10,000-person federal and contractor workforce. There are two clinics at Hanford.  In October DOE […]

Over the holidays, the Department of Energy’s cleanup contractor at the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee and a former employee there filed summary judgment motions in a COVID-19-related wrongful termination lawsuit. The prime, Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), argues that as a government contractor, it has sovereign immunity from the lawsuit filed by Yolonda […]

With federal courts already involved, the Government Accountability Office will not consider an Atkins-led group’s challenge of a $45-billion Department of Energy award to manage liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. “We dismiss the protest because the matter involved is the subject of litigation before a court of competent jurisdiction,” the […]

While the Department of Energy is increasingly interested in using grout to solidify some low-level radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production at its Hanford Site in Washington, operation of such a facility would not begin before the 2030s, according to a recent report. Various scenarios from DOE and its state regulator, the Washington […]