Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The federal prosecutor for Eastern Washington state filed a complaint in federal district court accusing the Department of Energy’s landlord contractor for the Hanford Site of fraudulently padding labor charges for fire safety by millions of dollars. The case against Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS), a joint venture of Leidos, Centerra and Parsons, was announced […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have started the two-year effort to carve out a new underground panel for transuranic waste disposal at the salt mine near Carlsbad, N.M., the department said Tuesday. In late December, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime Salado Isolation Mining Contractors made its first cut into […]

A Department of Energy environmental contractor has finished preparing the Integrated Disposal Facility at the Hanford Site in Washington to store canisters of solidified low-level radioactive waste beginning in 2025, DOE said Tuesday. The Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF) was built in 2006 at the center of the Hanford complex. Now, the Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup […]

David Bowen, the top state regulator assigned to the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, has accepted a new job within the Washington Department of Ecology, the state agency said Tuesday. Bowen, who has been with Ecology since 2016 and led the Nuclear Waste Program since December 2020, has been appointed director of the agency’s central […]

The Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio plans to extend by up to a year an existing business deal with a New Mexico-based uranium enrichment services company, according to a federal online procurement notice. DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office plans to extend the existing agreement with Louisiana Energy Services, so that it expires on Feb. […]

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled a longtime scientist and manager at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories was not effectively fired by the prime contractor when given only 24 hours to decide whether to retire. A three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit ruled Friday Jan. 19 that Robert Hwang was […]

A stop work order, issued after a tool basket fell about 2,150 feet down the utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, was lifted last month, according to a recent safety watchdog report. The stop work order triggered by the Nov. 20 accident was partly lifted Dec. 16, […]

The Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, offline since September, should start heating up next month and resume treating sodium-bearing radioactive waste in March, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The extended outage at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), held in part to replace carbon beds used to remove […]

A federal judge in East Tennessee granted a request last week by the cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site to delay more proceedings in a COVID-19 lawsuit until a higher court decides if the contractor is shielded from the suit. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley ruled Jan. 18 that Amentum-led United […]

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 […]