Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Barring settlement, a federal racial discrimination lawsuit brought by a security officer against the Department of Energy contractor running the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., would go to trial early next year. In an order last month, U.S. District Judge James Browning scheduled a trial starting Jan. 9, 2023 in litigation brought by […]

The Department of Energy kicked off solicitation Wednesday for a potential $120 million small business Technical Assistance Contract for certain Office of Environmental Management field sites, including the cleanup office at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The final request for proposals (RFP) for the multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract was announced in […]

Christopher Davis will be Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s next chief of staff, Granholm wrote Friday in an all-hands email. Davis, according to his LinkedIn profile, has been a senior advisor to Granholm since right around Inauguration Day, prior to which he held various roles at DOE dating back to 2011. Before that, he spent […]

A facility to remove cesium from low-level radioactive tank waste has already treated 200,000 gallons of waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, an agency spokesperson said this week.    The Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) project at Hanford was offline briefly during February, staff at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board […]

Bechtel National won about 74% of its potential award fee for work on the Waste Treatment Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site during 2021, according to a fee scorecard released Thursday. The company claimed roughly $5.8 million out of a potential $7.9 million for construction on the vitrification plant between Jan. 1 and […]

COVID-19’s grip on the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management continues to loosen, for now anyway, as the number of weekly confirmed cases at the cleanup office declined to 28, down 15 from the prior week’s total of 43, a spokesperson said in a Thursday email. In another sign of the omicron wave’s retreat, […]

Contractor inexperience with big-ticket projects and the Department of Energy’s failure to fully account for risks contributed to mushrooming cost and a three-year slide in schedule for a critical underground ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, a government watchdog reported this week. Since 2018, the cost estimate for the Safety […]

While the Joe Biden administration grapples with plans for a geologic repository for high-level waste to replace the stalled Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) urged the nominee to lead the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy office to prioritize a defense waste disposal site. “I believe you should separate defense from commercial […]

Over the next 10 years, the Department of Energy’s $7.6-billion Office of Environmental Management hopes to realize several of its long-desired objectives around the nuclear weapons cleanup complex. According to its Strategic Vision 2022-2032, published Tuesday by the Environmental Management (EM) branch, the feds expect to start converting low-level radioactive tank waste into glass at […]

PHOENIX— The Department of Energy’s $7.6 billion Office of Environmental Management is now responsible for only 15 cleanup sites, with the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York coming off the board. Meanwhile, DOE Environmental Management planned to sign a new collaboration agreement with the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority later today (Monday) at the 2022 […]

PHOENIX  — The president of the legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico expects her team will soon close out work on  radioactive contamination found two years ago outside the fence along a public road. Also, this year, the Hunting Ingalls-led joint venture will dig up some […]

Todd Shrader, second in command at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management since 2019, is leaving the cleanup office for a clean energy job at the agency, according to an internal email sent Monday. Longtime DOE hand Candice Robertson will step in for Shrader on an acting basis, William (Ike) White, senior advisor […]

PHOENIX – The 2,100-plus attendees at Waste Management Symposia were asked upon registration to place a color-coded dot on their name badges to show their level of COVID-era comfort about personal space and handshakes. Then, when the conference began, attendees were asked to observe a moment of silence for Ukrainians being shelled by Russia’s army. […]

PHOENIX —The Department of Energy was eyeing an “easy fix” for the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit in Idaho, knocked offline Feb. 26 during the final demo run preceding treatment of nearly 1 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, an agency official said here Tuesday. The long-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) was processing a simulant, […]

PHOENIX — The final solicitations could be out in May for multi-billion-dollar contracts at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky, an agency procurement manager said here Tuesday. Aaron Deckard, procurement director for DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center, offered the assessment at the agency’s spring quarterly […]

PHOENIX — Demolition of the X-326 Process Building could be completed this July at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and around the time, depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion operations might resume at the former gaseous diffusion plant, speakers told the attendees of Waste Management Symposia here Wednesday. Remediation contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth aims to […]

The final fiscal 2022 compromise budget reached by Congress this week continues the era of flush funding for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch, which rises to nearly $7.9 billion for the 12 months ending Sept. 30, up from $7.6 billion. Under the spending plan, which on Friday had cleared Congress and awaited President […]

Idaho-based North Wind Portage has received the green light from the Department of Energy to commence transition to its new Moab Remedial Action Contract, potentially worth $614 million over 10 years for cleanup of uranium mill tailings in Utah. “The transition task order may last up to 60 days,” a DOE spokesperson said by email […]

PHOENIX — After finishing major demolition and remediation last fall of the Y-12 National Security Complex’s Biology center or “mouse house,” the Department of Energy cleanup contractor is “very close” to turning the property back to Y-12 prime Consolidated Nuclear Services, a speaker told the Waste Management Symposia session Wednesday. “It is imminent,” Tommy Morgan, […]

An amended record of decision published this week by the Department of Energy officially withdrew an earlier designation of Waste Control Specialists as a storage site for elemental mercury. The long-telegraphed move was part of a legal settlement DOE reached in 2020 with gold mining concerns, themselves domestic generators of elemental mercury, who sued DOE […]

PHOENIX — After grappling with the airborne COVID-19 virus for a couple of years, the Department of Energy and other feds are studying another health concern, one centered around a large number of human-made chemicals with a history dating back to Manhattan Project uranium separation, a DOE official said here Thursday. The issue is release […]

A federal judge in Knoxville overseeing litigation brought by a half-dozen employees refusing vaccination against COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has called for parties in the case to confer with him by telephone March 25. U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr. issued an order Monday setting the scheduling conference in […]

Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) is back in the U.S. Senate more than a month after the 49-year-old lawmaker suffered a stroke. “Great to be back at work!” Luján said on this Twitter feed Thursday. The post includes pictures of the legislator in a meeting room, in what appears to be a Congressional corridor and […]

The Department of Energy and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration are window shopping at this stage for a ground-mounted solar-electric system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) posted a request for information Thursday on the SAM.gov federal procurement website for help “in determining the optimal […]

Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership, the Department of Energy contractor in charge of remediation at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, was deemed mostly “satisfactory” during fiscal 2021 and earned roughly half of its potential “adjective” fee, according to a recently-released scorecard from the agency. The joint venture made up of Jacobs, Fluor and BWX Technologies, earned […]

The Department of Energy’s facility to treat sodium-bearing radioactive waste at the Idaho National Laboratory was taken offline again after getting 17 days into a scheduled 50-day demonstration intended to clear the way for radioactive operations. The DOE and cleanup contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition decided to curtail operations of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) […]

A New Mexico citizens group and the Department of Energy filed a proposed settlement agreement Tuesday with a U.S. District Court in a long-running legal fight over a 2016 consent decree governing legacy nuclear cleanup around the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A 33-page agreement outlining proposed changes to the 2016 “compliance order on consent” was […]

After being offline for nearly two years due to a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and plant upgrades, the Department of Energy says conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride to a more stable form is resuming at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Likewise, depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion into uranium oxide at the Portsmouth Site in […]