Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pronounced herself “really disappointed with this year’s request” by the Department of Energy for cleanup of the Hanford Site in her home state. The Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2023 request of $2.5 billion for Hanford was not only […]

Authorities in New Mexico said Thursday afternoon they plan to use a controlled burn to give the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and the surrounding county more protection from the Cerro Pelado fire in the Jemez Mountains. A controlled burn is planned along Alamo trail to combat the fire that has burned 29,000 […]

Earnings rose at Jacobs, Dallas, in the second quarter of its fiscal 2022 year, which the international engineering and construction company attributed to increased demand across virtually all business lines. Net earnings for the quarter ended April 1 were $89 million, or $0.68 a share, up from net earnings of zero in the year-ago quarter, […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has updated its pending 10-year permit renewal application with the state of New Mexico to reflect the latest plans for transuranic waste disposal within the mine’s Panels 11 and 12. The proposal was submitted as part of the facility’s updated permit renewal application with the New Mexico […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management could improve its cost and schedule oversight for big-ticket projects such as the Hanford Site’s multi-billion-dollar Waste Treatment Plant in Washington state, the Government Accountability Office said this week. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Wednesday it did a performance audit from December 2020 to April 2022 […]

Swift & Staley could stay on as Infrastructure Support Services provider at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky through March 2023 while the company fights a court ruling that it should not have received a small-business set-aside follow-on contract for the work. The existing landlord would remain in place at Paducah through March […]

Prospective bidders on a Department of Energy contract for long-term storage of domestic elemental mercury now have two extra weeks, until May 20, to submit proposals. In an update on its procurement page for Elemental Mercury Long-term Management and Storage, the DOE said Thursday April 21 that the submission deadline is being extended to May […]

The procurement arm of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office is requesting information from contractors capable of storing and disposing of low-level or mixed low-level hazardous waste, according to a recent online notice. The DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center issued a sources sought/request for information (RFI) on Thursday April 21, trying to […]

While the Department of Energy is still gunning for a fall start of radiological operations, agency officials acknowledged this week they are not sure how long a final test run might take for the  Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory. When asked by a Citizens Advisory Board member for the Idaho Cleanup […]

It is time for a federal district court judge in Washington state to toss out the amended complaint brought by more than 300 workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site who oppose mandatory vaccination against COVID-19, government lawyers said in filings last week. “Regardless of what procedural exhaustion requirements must be met to assert […]

The Department of Energy’s tardiness in providing its entire detailed justification for its fiscal 2023, as well as cleanup challenges at the Hanford Site in Washington state, were among the issues House lawmakers raised with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm Thursday in a two-plus-hour budget hearing. DOE had by Thursday published most of its detailed […]

Washington state regulators probably will not allow the Department of Energy to solidify the Hanford Site’s liquid tank waste with grout-like cement until and unless the parties agree to permit disposal methods for liquid waste other than immobilization in glass, officials told a National Academies of Sciences panel Thursday. “Ecology considers on-site grout disposal to […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has made use of “Nonpublic Collaborative Discussions” on various issues since being given the option to use such private meetings in the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, according to a recent report. “The NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] for fiscal year 2021 included a change to the Atomic […]

The Department of Energy has signed off on a $5.4-million task order for Four River Nuclear Partnership to build an emergency operations center at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, according to a procurement notice posted online Friday April 22. Construction is scheduled to start this year, according to the DOE Office of Environmental Management budget […]

In a just-unsealed public version of a decision last month, a Federal Claims Court judge agrees Swift & Staley is too big to qualify for a new Department of Energy Infrastructure Support Services contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky because of its “negative control” of a joint venture doing similar work at the time […]

The Joe Biden administration’s $7.6-billion budget request for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office should help the agency begin conversion of low-activity radioactive tank waste into glass at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and other key remediation chores, William (Ike) White told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee Wednesday. The DOE Office of Environmental […]

The Joe Biden administration’s $7.6-billion budget request for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office should help the agency begin conversion of low-activity radioactive tank waste into glass at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and other key remediation chores, William (Ike) White told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee Wednesday. The DOE Office of Environmental […]

New Mexico’s governor blasted the Secretary of Energy this month for failing to provide “meaningful and transparent public engagement” about the agency’s plans to ship immobilized, surplus plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant from South Carolina. “Because the issues raised in the petition can only be addressed by DOE, I am passing this petition […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management officially said in an April 15 press release it is expanding its Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program thanks to increased funding for the program in the agency’s fiscal 2022 budget, which started Oct. 1. In March, DOE’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina said Minority Serving […]

A federal district judge in southern Ohio is allowing most claims brought by a group of local residents to proceed against current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site. With the exception of not allowing minor children to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit chiefly concerning property, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley rejected […]

The Jacobs-led cleanup contractor the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory has lifted a self-imposed “stand down” order at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday. The contractor, Idaho Environmental Coalition, lifted the order March 31, the DOE spokesperson said in a Tuesday email. The spokesperson was responding to a Weapons […]

Until the recent past, the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico let its fire trucks fall into disrepair and did a poor job of training firefighters, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a just-released report.   While it found no evidence to substantiate the most serious allegations raised about the […]

AVANTech, a Columbia, S.C.,-based radioactive and industrial water treatment solutions provider for the Department of Energy and commercial nuclear markets, said this week it recently completed expansion of its business development staff, by adding or promoting five managers. Tammy Monday joined AVANTech in January as vice president of business development for government services, working out […]

A container of transuranic waste from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was put underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in March without a required flammable gas analysis, a federal safety group said. Analysis of the omitted screening for the Los Alamos container is nearly done, said a DOE […]

The Supreme Court should uphold the constitutionality of a 2018 Washington state law that makes it easier for workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site to qualify for compensation for illnesses, the state attorney general’s office argued Monday before the high court. The U.S. Supreme Court, an independent branch of the federal government, agreed […]

William (Ike) White, the top manager of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, expects excess contaminated facilities in the weapons complex to draw more attention in the next decade or so, he told a National Academies of Sciences board Wednesday. Within that span, it will be time for the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management […]

The Department of Energy has withdrawn the federal procurement notice from Monday announcing a planned multi-year extension for the prime at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, saying it was “done in error.” The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “are jointly developing contract plans related to […]