Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has told transuranic waste generators that it won’t take shipments during February 2024, the head of DOE’s prime contractor said here Wednesday. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has traditionally held a multi-week maintenance outage during the winter and February tends to be hardest […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — This winter the Department of Energy and Waste Control Specialists should start moving remaining containers of transuranic waste, stuck at the company’s Texas facility for nine years, to a new above-ground storage facility to prep the material for shipment to the agency’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The “notional” deadline […]

On Tuesday, SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering and project managing company, rebranded itself AtkinsRéalis and its chief U.S. subsidiary Atkins Nuclear Secured is now rechristened as AtkinsRéalis Nuclear Secured, company officials said this week. The parent company, which is involved in the nuclear industry and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, will officially change its stock […]

Washington state will regain access to certain Department of Energy data about the Hanford Site in settlement of a $1-million penalty the state issued against DOE in 2020, the parties announced Thursday. As part of the settlement, DOE will create a system for the Washington state Department of Ecology to access documents that the state […]

Fluor Corp. will pay a civil penalty of $14.5 million as part of a settlement agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said Wednesday. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated Fluor’s accounting errors on two lump sum engineering, procurement and construction contracts, the company said in a press release. Fluor neither […]

With less than a month left until fiscal year 2024 begins, the White House has asked Congress for a short-term continuing resolution to freeze federal budgets at 2023 levels. Media reported last week that leaders in the House and Senate have remained open to the requested stopgap bill. Fiscal year 2024 begins Oct. 1.  The […]

An unsealed status report filed with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims by the Department of Justice says the Department of Energy might seek updated proposals for the legally embattled liquid waste contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state, potentially worth $45-billion. This time around, a DOE contract officer would have discretion to treat […]

Months after a deal was announced, the Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology are still not ready to share details from recently-completed closed-door talks on future cleanup of the Hanford Site, though the feds are preparing to publish a new five-year plan for the former plutonium production property. Back in May, […]

A small fire ignited but did not last long last month at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The small blaze occurred at an area associated with heating up melter No. 1 at the Waste Treatment Immobilization Plant built by Bechtel, […]

Bill Richardson, a secretary of energy during the Bill Clinton administration who at various points of his career was a Democratic congressman and New Mexico governor, and became something of a specialist in international hostage negotiation, died Sept. 1 at age 75, according to major media accounts. Richardson was first elected to Congress in 1982 […]

The Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio last week made its first rail shipment of depleted uranium oxide containers to the Waste Control Specialists disposal site in West Texas, DOE announced Tuesday. The shipment of 120 storage cylinders from the Mid-America Conversion Services depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plant at the former gaseous diffusion […]

Current and former nuclear weapons workers in the Greater Denver area are invited by the Department of Labor to show up at a Sept. 12 information session on federal occupational illness benefits. Labor Department representatives will be on hand at the Arvada, Colo., session to help attendees with filing new claims or assisting with existing […]

The Environmental Protection Agency said in a recent letter it has not agreed to change cleanup plans for Building 324 and the contaminated soil under it at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “does not concur on any activities towards placing the 324 Building in a […]

A March incident where a subcontractor at the Paducah Site in Kentucky might have been overexposed to a chemical will trigger an internal investigation at the Department of Energy, , according to a notice from the agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. On Aug. 21, the office notified Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services and two of its […]

In keeping with a White House-backed program to develop clean energy on Department of Energy weapons complex land, the Hanford Site in Washington state plans to host industry players this month in order to learn more about the property’s potential for carbon-free electricity. DOE on Wednesday issued a request for information to seek out companies […]

Energy Northwest, an electric generator that already has a nuclear plant outside Richland, Wash., plans to be on hand Sept. 22 when the Department of Energy hosts an industry day for enterprises interested in generating carbon-free electricity at the Hanford Site. “We have a long relationship leasing DOE land for clean energy generation projects. For […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office is shopping around for potential providers of Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program support. According to a sources sought notice posted online Tuesday, the agency’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said the contractor will tackle “preparedness issues for shipments of DOE radiological material and waste,” across the weapons complex. […]

The Department of Energy is more than halfway toward its goal of removing cesium from a million gallons of liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state, a prerequisite for solidifying the waste in the coming years, a DOE manager told the Hanford Advisory Board Aug. 23 Cesium removal should resume in September […]

On Tuesday the Department of Energy rolled out a draft solicitation for the next stage of remediation at the West Valley Demonstration Project in Western New York, a contract potentially worth $3 billion over a decade. The new indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract would replace the existing pact held by a team of Jacobs and BWX Technologies […]

The Department of Energy will buy a total of $164,000 in renewable energy credits from a Virginia-based company to help the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio comply with a presidential executive order on clean energy. The renewable credits for Paducah and Portsmouth  are being purchased from WGL Energy Services in […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not be published on Friday Aug. 18, 2023 and Friday Aug. 25, 2023, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess.

Veolia Nuclear Solutions Federal Services this week identified itself as an integrated subcontractor on the new Amentum-led cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. The prime, Southern Ohio Cleanup Company also includes Fluor and Cavendish Nuclear. The team on July 13 received a Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning contract from DOE […]

Perma-Fix, Atlanta, turned a profit in the second quarter of the year as revenues rose and the company regained what its CEO called pre-pandemic momentum. On a call with investors last week, CEO Mark Duff also said that Perma-Fix is on a team fighting to force the Department of Energy and the court system to […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity seeks an external consultant to assess how the Joe Biden administration’s Justice40 program has affected economically underserved communities, according to recently published procurement documents. The small business contract has a one-year base period and a one-year option period. The base period will stretch well into […]

Workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state last week practiced three early steps of solidifying liquid radioactive waste inside glass, a site contractor said Tuesday in a press release. Personnel poured glass beads called frit into a heated melter at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, liquifying the glass in a first-ever trial run […]

Severe thunderstorms along the East Coast knocked out power and damaged property near Department of Energy nuclear sites from South Carolina to Washington, but much service was restored by Friday. Federal employees in the Washington region got an early dismissal on Monday as storms rolled in, but federal offices returned to normal operating schedules for […]

Earnings fell at Jacobs, Dallas, in the third quarter of its fiscal 2023 year as the international engineer company continued to move toward a sale of its government contracting business. Net earnings for the quarter ended June 30 were $164 million, or $1.29 a share, down from net earnings of $196 million or $1.52 a […]