Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

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 […]

A lawsuit against the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, filed by about 80 employees who objected to its COVID-19 vaccination policy, was dismissed. The plaintiffs, led by Shawn Phillip Rhoades, and defendant Savannah River Nuclear Solutions filed a joint motion for dismissal dated Thursday in the U.S. […]

With Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm set to visit the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state Friday a coalition of organizations wrote President Joe Biden Tuesday urging a $1 billion increase in cleanup funding for the former plutonium production site. “Given its role as the workhorse for plutonium production, the scope of Hanford’s cleanup […]

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), whose 4th congressional district includes the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, is the evident winner of an open primary, despite being one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 capitol insurrection. But Newhouse’s fellow House Appropriations Committee member in a neighboring district, who […]

The Department of Energy says the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project at the Hanford Site in Washington state has now pretreated 380,000 gallons of low-level radioactive tank waste before entering its latest outage on July 20. More than 182,000 gallons of tank waste was treated in Batch 2, which began on June 18 and concluded July […]

Counties surrounding the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and DOE nuclear cleanup sites in Utah and Nevada no longer have high transmission levels of COVID-19. That is according to the latest data posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website Friday. When local CDC […]

The new Amentum-led cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee will be taking over transuranic waste operations at the property from North Wind Group later this year, an agency spokesperson confirmed this week.  Transition to United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) from North Wind was to begin at the end of […]

As of Thursday evening, House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) was narrowly leading an open primary in his 4th Congressional district that encompasses the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state with a Democratic Party challenger 1,000 votes behind. Newhouse, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump […]

The highly-contaminated Hanford Site in Washington state accounted for over half the environmental liability for the entire Department of Energy, but opportunities exist for curbing increasing costs at the property, according to a congressional watchdog. In a new report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said DOE could save “tens of billions of dollars” by abandoning […]

Amid a profitable quarter, Fluor, Irving, Texas, said Friday the Department of Energy plans to extend a Fluor-led joint venture’s tenure as prime contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for up to five years. During an earnings call, Fluor CEO David Constable also expressed optimism about the company’s chances of landing individual […]