Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

President Joe Biden’s administration requested $47.2 million in funding for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for fiscal year 2024, up from $41.4 million this year. That is according to the 1,350-page appendix to the fiscal 2024 budget request released by the White House this week. Fiscal year 2024 begins Oct. 1. The Defense Nuclear […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has, after an extended outage, restarted a cesium pretreatment pilot project critical to waste solidification at the site, the DOE said this week. Tank operations manager Washington River Protection Solutions has resumed operation of the Tank-Side Cesium Removal System (TSCR) at Hanford, DOE […]

Bills pending before the South Carolina legislature could split the state regulator for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken into two separate organizations, a state agency official told the Citizens Advisory Board for the federal complex Monday. Susan Fulmer, manager of federal remediation for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental […]

A small business solicitation for nuclear cleanup, expected out within the next month, could be the only new one to hit the street by August, the Department of Energy Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said this week. The DOE previously said the request for proposals (RFP) Small Business Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning and Removal contract could […]

The 2024 budget for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state would grow to an unprecedented $3 billion or so from $2.7 billion this year, if President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget request became law. Overall, however, the administration’s budget request would keep funding at the DOE Office of Environmental Management about flat […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would, after helping prop up the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund again in fiscal 2024, effectively stay flat at $8.3 billion, according to White House budget request details released this week. The Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a hearing on the DOE spending request next […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 32 shipments of transuranic waste during February, according to the facility’s public website. The latest monthly figure shows progress over the prior year shipment period, but suggests DOE still must increase its rate over a sustained period to reach the annual levels the […]

The Department of Energy is “on track” to start solidifying liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state “no later than 2025,” the agency said in its latest budget request this week.  That timeline, less optimistic than the December 2023 goal the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management was targeting until a few months […]

The Department of Energy’s Huntington Ingalls-led legacy cleanup team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is being extended for another three years, a company official told a federal advisory board meeting this week. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) “was recently notified that DOE will exercise the first option period under […]

Former Idaho Gov. Phil Batt (R) died March 4 at age 96. During Batt’s tenure, Idaho inked a 1995 settlement the U.S. Navy and Department of Energy governing cleanup and removal of nuclear spent fuel from the Idaho National Laboratory. Gov. Brad Little (R) immediately ordered the lowering of Idaho and American flags in Batt’s […]

Butte County, Idaho sued Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in federal court this week over continued spent nuclear fuel storage at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory. The county says DOE should bear the “social” and “economic” costs of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) serving as a “default repository” for nuclear waste from entities […]

PHOENIX— Small and disadvantaged businesses could secure more federal funding from the Department of Energy’s $8-billion nuclear cleanup office, according to procurement representatives who addressed the Waste Management Symposia here last week. The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is raising its small and disadvantaged business awards goal for fiscal 2023 to 7% from […]

President Joe Biden recently announced his intent to nominate Patricia Lee, who has more than 30 years of experience with radiation protection issues at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina and elsewhere, to serve on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Lee now serves as the portfolio manager for the laboratory’s digital enterprise, […]

A small leak of simulant, detected last week, has been cleaned up at a waste treatment facility undergoing commissioning at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, a spokesperson said Wednesday. The “final preparations for the start of radiological operations” within the coming weeks, are continuing by DOE and its Jacobs-led contractor, Idaho Environmental Coalition, […]

A legal challenge to COVID-19 vaccination policy at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state will be heard in early May by a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, according to a notice posted online last week. Oral arguments in David Donovan versus Brian Vance are […]

PHOENIX – The Department of Energy is expected to hand down more guidance this spring and summer on what agency sites should do about a group of synthetic chemicals first widely-used during the Manhattan Project days for uranium-separation. That was the word here last Thursday from Karen Skubal, an environmental engineer with the DOE’s Office […]

PHOENIX —Born of necessity during the pandemic, the virtual tours and online meetings held for Department of Energy nuclear cleanup work have proven popular and probably won’t go away soon, even as the impact of COVID-19 fades, officials said here last week. Like other organizations, the DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center is taking […]

The Department of Energy nuclear cleanup procurement office said this week it intends to increase the maximum value of a small business Technical Assistance Contract at the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings site in Utah by $1.7 million. In a Tuesday notice, the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center announced plans to increase the set-aside contract […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office should roll out its final solicitation for a national deactivation set-aside contract for small businesses by April 8, the agency said last week. The Small Business Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning and Removal contract pre-solicitation notice dated March 1 anticipates the final request for proposals (RFP) within 45 days from […]

President Joe Biden’s (D) administration announced Thursday it wants $8.3 billion for cleanup of Cold War and Manhattan Project nuclear properties for fiscal 2024, which would be flat with the final Congressional appropriation for the current spending year ending Sept. 30. A 182-page overview of the fiscal 2024 budget recommendation was released at mid-day by […]

By the end of the year, the Department of Energy expects to file final reports with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Kentucky for taking down the C-400 building at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, officials said last week at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix. The Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study Report for the C-400 Complex […]

The Amentum-led tank management contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has inked a $8.9 million subcontract with Richland-based Fowler General Construction to build an interim surface barrier over the U Tank Farm. Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), which has Atkins as minority partner, announced the award Tuesday in a press […]

Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs would get a roughly 6% boost under the budget request President Joe Biden (D) released Thursday, while weapons cleanup would be flat. For DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, the Biden administration proposed roughly $23.8 billion for the 2024 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That’s over $1.5 billion […]

PHOENIX – The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has since 2017 received only half as many transuranic waste shipments annually as it did prior to a February 2014 underground radiation leak that halted operations for three years – but that could soon change, officials said Wednesday. Encouraged by the startup […]

PHOENIX — The top manager for the Bechtel affiliate now in charge of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico expects a new underground ventilation system to be operating by late 2025 or early 2026. Ken Harrawood, president and program manager of Salado Isolation Mining, which took over as prime contract […]

PHOENIX – With 2,700 participants walking through the sprawling Phoenix Convention Center, many of them young people hunting work in the nuclear industry, and hardly anybody wearing a mask, it’s easy to forget that three years ago, while the Waste Management Symposia was in session, the Work Health Organization declared the the 2019 coronavirus outbreak […]

PHOENIX — The Department of Energy anticipates the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory to treat its first batch of radioactive waste by early April, the agency’s top nuclear cleanup officials said here this week.  Environmental Management Senior Adviser William (Ike) White reiterated his message, on the project nearing the finish line, […]

The origins of what became the West Valley Demonstration Project in Western New York can be traced back to 1949 when the then-Soviet Union held its first successful nuclear weapons test, Craig Rieman, a Department of Energy deputy manager at the site told a Waste Management Symposia panel Thursday in Phoenix. “That was a big […]

PHOENIX —The chances of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state making its first glass from radioactive tank waste by Dec. 31, 2023 is “very low” but reaching that milestone during 2024 is doable, site manager Brian Vance said at a Waste Management Symposia session Tuesday morning. Vance’s assessment was in response to […]