Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

More than a year after President Joe Biden announced the effort, much of the Department of Energy’s weapons complex is struggling to understand the particulars of the Justice40 Initiative if comments Wednesday by nuclear cleanup advisory board chairs are any indication. In broad terms, Justice40 was set up by Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order 14008, […]

The Department of Energy plans to increase the ceiling for the Moab Technical Assistance Contract held by S&K Logistics Services to $29.8 million from $24.3 million, according to a notice published Thursday on a federal procurement website.  The Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center posted a “justification for other than full and open competition” on […]

The Department of Energy granted a request by Los Alamos National Laboratory’ cleanup contractor in New Mexico to resume “drilling and draining” containers with free liquids to prepare them for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an agency spokesperson said Sept. 2. DOE has also endorsed plans by Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) […]

Discovery of radioactive contamination on a transuranic waste transportation container in August prompted the Department of Energy to pause certain work at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., a spokesperson said Sept. 2. During maintenance on Aug. 24, a staffer spotted an “unexpected substance” near the bottom of the shipping container, a Waste […]

In one of its first public field hearings since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board will review operations at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico this November. During a Nov. 16 session in Santa Fe, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) will look into both […]

The Department of Energy now expects to replace an aging electrical substation on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant grounds near Carlsbad, N.M., in 2023, a spokesperson said this week. The substation replacement project is now planned for “the spring time frame,” a spokesperson for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) said in a Tuesday email […]

Two megadollar Department of Energy nuclear cleanup contracts, together potentially worth more than $50 billion, could be awarded by early 2023, a top Office of Environmental Management procurement executive told a gathering in Santa Fe, N.M., Wednesday. The Integrated Tank Disposition Contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract […]

The Department of Energy has yet to conclude an outage that began July 20 at the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project at the Hanford Site in Washington state, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday. Since beginning operation in late January, the Tank-Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) project has pre-treated 380,000 gallons of radioactive tank waste and DOE expects to […]

The state of Idaho made the Department of Energy pay about $10 million in penalties so far for its failure to clean up high-level sodium bearing radioactive waste at the Idaho National Laboratory, something the agency hopes to do before Jan. 1. Although DOE has yet to set a start-up date for radiological operation of […]

The Joe Biden administration overstepped its authority by utilizing the Procurement Act to impose a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most employees of government contractors, a federal appeals court said Friday. However, a federal district judge in Georgia went too far in issuing a nationwide injunction against the contractor vaccine mandate, the panel of judges for […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board wants the Department of Energy and its legacy cleanup contractor to prioritize a new safety analysis for the waste handling area of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that is currently in limited operations. Since January 2020, contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) has declared 24 […]

The Department of Energy Office of Enterprise Assessments is satisfied overall with safety programs Bechtel National is developing for a waste solidification plant aiming to start up late next year at the Hanford Site in Washington state, but says improvements are needed. One area the agency should address prior to startup of Direct-Feed-Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) […]

Due in part to this year’s Cerro Pelado wildfire, the New Mexico Environment Department has given the cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory until Oct. 30 to perform sampling connected with a hexavalent chromium plume. The state agency officially granted a two-month extension in an Aug. 24 letter to the […]

The prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is investigating two separate incidents where technical safety requirement violations occurred at the disposal facility for defense-related transuranic waste, a spokesperson said late Wednesday. The incidents that led to the violations occurred Aug. 15 and Aug. 16, said the spokesperson […]

Online data suggests the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio appears to be the only Department of Energy nuclear cleanup site which still has a high local transmission rate of COVID-19. An Exchange Monitor search of county-by-county data posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC website listed Pike County, Ohio as about […]

The Department of Energy this week unveiled a framework for increasing its workplace diversity as directed by the White House, the agency said in a press release. Under DOE’s new Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) strategic plan, the agency aims to “sustain an inclusive and accessible work environment by strengthening recruitment, retention and promotion, […]

The procurement office for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch kicked off its market research this week for small businesses interested in providing technical services to the agency. In addition to the request for information (RFI) for Consolidated Technical Support Services, now provided by incumbent BTP Services, the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center also […]

After being criticized for foot-dragging, the Department of Energy and Washington state announced an agreement Aug. 25 to address two leaking underground radioactive tanks at the Hanford Site, as well as future tank leaks. Under a binding order, the federal agency and the Washington Department of Ecology agreed by 2028 to cover the site’s T […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week gave litigators for contractor Swift & Staley as well as the Department of Justice seven days to specify dates in December they won’t be available for oral arguments. “Briefing is completed in this case,” the appeals court said in a Monday order, instructing litigators […]

Current and former Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio deny responsibility in court papers filed this week for the cancer death of a 13-year-old boy who lived near the nuclear cleanup property. The eight contractors filed a response Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio to a wrongful death […]

A University of Georgia research associate at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina was “treated and hospitalized for a few days for observation,” after being bitten by a poisonous copperhead snake July 22, a spokesperson said Wednesday. “The individual is fully recovered and returned to work,” Vicky Sutton-Jackson, a spokesperson for […]

The number of active onsite cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management sites fell this week, according to a spokesperson for the cleanup office. There were 162 active cases of the virus among Environmental Management (EM) and contractor staff who don’t telework, the spokesperson said in a Thursday email. That […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not be published on Aug. 19, 2022 or Aug. 26, 2022, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022.

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., could hear oral arguments as early as October in the long-running litigation on whether Swift & Staley should have been disqualified for the new Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract awarded by the Department of Energy in December 2020. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Tuesday […]

A New Mexico citizens group that is a frequent critic of the Department of Energy wants a firm end date for closure of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant  near Carlsbad, N.M., and greater transparency surrounding the federal transuranic waste program. In addition, Don Hancock, nuclear waste program director at Southwest Research and Information Center, told […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is still “considering potential enforcement action” against the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch for failure to move stranded drums of transuranic waste out of Waste Control Specialists’ facility in Andrews County, a commission spokesperson said last week. The DOE Office of Environmental Management wrote the state July 11 […]

An APTIM-North Wind joint venture that ran into bad luck and bedrock while building the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee may have its contract extended beyond the current Dec. 5 expiration, a Department of Energy spokesperson said recently. “The Mercury Treatment Facility is scheduled to be operational in […]

While it did not generate much chatter Monday during a quarterly earnings call focused on strong numbers, BWX Technologies is in the running for billions more in government contracts across the Department of Energy weapons complex over the next year. Having already won the $21-billion, 15-year Savannah River Integrated Mission contract for liquid waste cleanup […]