Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Congress should enact legislation to clarify the Department of Energy’s authority to sell depleted uranium to private entities, the Government Accountability Office said this week, because such a move could curb the $7.2 billion cost to dispose of the material. As of September 2021, the feds estimate it could cost DOE $7.2 billion to convert […]

Senate appropriators on Thursday rejected proposed cuts to cleanup programs at Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites in a spending bill that would provide around half a billion dollars more than either this year’s budget or the White House’s request for next year. The proposed energy and water appropriations act, published Thursday, would also go above […]

Anyone visiting indoor facilities at Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites in coming days should probably take along an approved face mask as COVID-19 community transmission rates are high in most locations. The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management requires masks be worn indoors when local community rates are high as measured by the […]

A federal district judge in Eastern Washington this week approved an unopposed request allowing the Department of Energy another year-and-a-half to start solidifying certain radioactive tank waste into glass and other work for the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant. The ruling Tuesday by Senior U.S. District Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson means DOE and contractor Bechtel […]

Joel Duling will resign as president of BWT Technology’s mainstay Nuclear Operations Group effective July 29, the company wrote in a regulatory filing dated Monday. Duling informed the company of his decision on July 12, according to the 8-K filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.  “Joel Duling is retiring from BWXT to pursue other […]

The Department of Energy confirmatory test run for the much-anticipated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory will likely end around the end of July, a state official said recently. “The [Integrated Waste Treatment Unit] continues to run and will do so for approximately two more weeks,” Kim Custer, a senior hazardous waste […]

The Department of Energy intends to extend its existing paramilitary security contract with a Centerra company at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for up to two years, according to a recent notice. The Savannah River Operations Office plans to keep on longtime security provider Centerra Group, up to 24 months, which translates to […]

The U.S. Department of Justice filed written arguments last week saying a federal appeals court should uphold a lower court’s decision that Swift & Staley failed to meet size limits for a set-aside landlord contract at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky. Kentucky-based Swift & Staley, on the other hand, wants the U.S. […]

The liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site said Monday it had processed more than 366,000 gallons of liquid waste in the Tank-Side Cesium Removal system, which prepares waste for solidification in the nearby Waste Treatment and Vitrification Plant that DOE hopes to switch on in 2023. That was according to a […]

Like the U.S. Department of Energy, the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is in the market for local communities open to hosting an underground disposal facility for radioactive waste. “Our mission goes beyond existing sites,” David Peattie, CEO of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said in a recent annual report for 2021-2022. The NDA is […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 30 shipments of transuranic waste during June, making it one of the busiest disposal months since the COVID-19 pandemic reduced in-person operations at DOE nuclear sites in March 2020. Of the 30 shipments last month recorded on a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) […]

The legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in August plans to start the site’s largest radioactive waste extraction effort in more than a decade, a company executive told a federal advisory board Thursday. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) vice president Joe Legare said in August the contractor […]

Northern New Mexico Integrated Security, a joint venture between incumbent Centerra Group and Tsay Construction and Services, a small business with tribal ownership, won a five-year security services contract at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the lab announced Wednesday. Triad National Security, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s management contractor for Los Alamos, […]

The House of Representatives voted 220-207 Wednesday to approve the 2023 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, which includes $7.9 billion for the Department of Energy’s cleanup of Cold War and Manhattan Project sites. With a little more than two months left in fiscal 2022, the package of six spending bills, including funds for DOE’s Office […]

Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation took home about $16 million of a potential $16.8 million for its final review period as the Department of Energy’s cleanup contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to a fee scorecard, issued Thursday. Savannah River Remediation (SRR) earned $1.5 million out of a potential $1.7 million in […]

After a dip last week, the number of confirmed, active cases of COVID-19 among onsite workers for the Department of Energy’s office of Environmental Management rose by 50 this week to 169, almost back to the 171 cases logged two weeks ago. The numbers for non-telecommuting Environmental Management (EM) workers, provided Thursday by a federal […]

Department of Energy contractor Mid-America Conversion Services has restarted the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plant at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio for the first time since 2020, but operations at the Paducah Site in Kentucky are expected to be down until next month after a June 10 accident there, the agency said. Both depleted uranium […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management chose a Bechtel National-led joint venture to manage the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., starting as soon as October. As of Friday morning, none of the losing bidders had protested the award to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). One source said DOE’s debriefings to losing […]

Current and former Department of Energy contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have until Aug. 30 to file a reply to a federal lawsuit filed by a father who claims offsite radioactive contamination contributed to the cancer that claimed the life of his 13-year-old son. The deadlines for the answers to the complaint was […]

The Congressionally-created safety watchdog for nuclear defense facilities was not denied access to any Department of Energy records or personnel during the first six months of 2022. In a regular update to Congress, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) said July 1 that the Secretary of Energy did not deny any written requests for […]

The Department of Energy has issued an enforcement letter to an Amentum-Jacobs joint venture and its subcontractor GEM Technologies over “concerns with improper asbestos exposure monitoring” during cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex’s Mouse House. The DOE’s Office of Enforcement, however, plans no additional action against URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) or GEM over asbestos […]

The Department of Energy has approved its plan to speed up spent fuel removal from the L-Basin storage area at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In a Monday press release, DOE announced approval of what it calls accelerated basin de-inventory ABD, which would use H Canyon to dissolve spent nuclear fuel without processing […]

The Department of Energy and South Carolina are investigating a July 4 spill of contaminated water around H Canyon at the Savannah River Site, officials confirmed this week. There was a spill of low-level radiologically-contaminated water from a temporary above-ground tank system used to take liquid from the pumping of a sump, which happens periodically […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has selected a manager from the semi autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, Cathy Tullis, to be its next chief of staff effective July 17. Tullis, currently chief of staff for the associate administrator for management and budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), will fill the […]

The Department of Energy’s special adviser for Environmental Management, William (Ike) White, told a Congressional panel Wednesday the agency’s cleanup branch is addressing research and development problems raised in an October 2021 Government Accountability Office report. The Office of Environmental Management has issued a definition for research and development (R&D) and is in the early […]

William (Ike) White, the top fed at the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management, anticipates radiological operations “at least up and running” at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at Idaho National Laboratory by the end of the year. White made the remark to Weapons Complex Monitor Wednesday after a House Science, Space and Technology […]

The Department of Energy is gathering market data about the next Occupational Medical Services contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state, the agency announced Thursday. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the request for information in a press release and on the government procurement website, SAM.gov. Thursday’s notice said the Office of Environmental […]