Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

PHOENIX —One year into its new 10-year deal at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge has finished demolishing some key structures at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the remediation prime’s CEO said Wednesday. All of the old contaminated buildings at Y-12 and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory […]

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 […]

The Department of Energy plans to extend, by five more years until April 11, 2028, business deals with two privately-held disposal sites that occasionally take radioactive waste from the federal agency, according to procurement notices published Monday. The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management published a “justification for other than full and open competition” for certain […]

PHOENIX – Winning support for a new low-level radioactive waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee took a lot of time and friendly arm-twisting, a member of the House Appropriations Committee told the Waste Management Symposia Monday via electronic hookup from Washington, D.C. “For over 10 years we have needed […]

PHOENIX – DOE is still deciding the longer-term fate of a landlord services contract for the Paducah Site in Kentucky after a federal appeals court ruled in December that incumbent Swift & Staley exceeded the size limits for the small-business set aside award, an agency official said here Tuesday. “We are working through a decision-making […]

PHOENIX— Planning by the Department of Energy and its contractors allowed the Hanford Site in Washington state to withstand the impact of recent wind gusts in excess of 80 miles per hour, the boss of the landlord services provider said here Wednesday. “The massive windstorm” on Feb. 20 knocked out of service about 13 miles […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., continues to study fire safety and other potential hazards that might arise from use of electric vehicles powered by big lithium-ion batteries, a federal safety panel said this month. “These hazards include fire, smoke, and combustion products, including hydrogen fluoride associated with the large […]

Hundreds of employees evacuated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages in Tennessee this week after a fire there, a spokesperson said. “There was a fire at approximately 9:15 involving uranium in Building 9212, a production facility onsite,” a spokesperson for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., wrote […]