Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Anne Marie White, the last Senate-confirmed assistant secretary for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, is opening a new distillery in her hometown in Michigan. White and Scott Anderson, another longtime hand on the old DOE weapons complex, will soon open “The Honorable Distillery” in a renovated movie theater in downtown Marquette, Mich., […]

The Hanford Advisory Board again stressed its concerns about leaking tanks in two pieces of written advice sent to the U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday. In the second day of a virtual meeting, the board voted to tell DOE that it wants the feds to prioritize removal of 3.37 million gallons of liquid wastes […]

Members of the Hanford Advisory Board said Wednesday they should have a voice in the Department of Energy’s plans to diversify the panel that provides policy recommendations on cleanup of the Hanford Site in Washington state. During an online meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board (HAB), many members said they want to provide input on […]

There were 35 confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management over the past week, up seven from the prior week’s total of 28, a nuclear cleanup spokesperson said by email Thursday. The count is down from the 43 confirmed two weeks ago and a far cry from the 775 […]

The Department of Energy on Thursday formally resumed its quest for a domestic site to store elemental mercury with publication of a solicitation for bids. The DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center announced in a press release a final request for proposals (RFP) for a long-term elemental mercury storage contractor. The move comes weeks […]

Department of Energy and Washington state Department of Ecology managers reassured the Hanford Advisory Board Wednesday their agencies remain interested in the Test Bed Initiative to grout 2,000 gallons of low-activity tank waste that would be shipped out of state. Brian Vance, the DOE’s manager for the Hanford Site, expects the Nuclear Regulation Commission to […]

The U.S. District Court for New Mexico has approved the proposed settlement filed earlier this month between the Department of Energy and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, or NukeWatch, over a 2016 federal-state consent decree covering legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory complex. In a Wednesday press release, NukeWatch said the deal approved by […]

Top federal and contractor managers at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico said Thursday they still hope to beat a 2026 date for operation of a new underground ventilation project criticized recently by the Government Accountability Office. There will be no additional public written report issued on corrective actions being […]

The Nevada National Security Site disposed of roughly 550,000 cubic feet of radioactive waste from other federal sites around the country during 2021, according to the Department of Energy. The total includes classified and low-level or mixed low-level radioactive waste, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said in its Strategic Vision for the former Nevada […]

Washington state Department of Ecology Director Laura Watson and her top nuclear waste manager, David Bowen, visited Washington, D.C., last week to urge that more cleanup funds for the Hanford Site be included in the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2023 budget. The Ecology officials were in the nation’s capital March 14-16 while President Joe Biden […]

Scott Sax, top contractor boss for Central Plateau cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is retiring in May and will be succeeded by the head of another Amentum-led Hanford joint venture, the company said Monday. Sax, president and project manager for Central Plateau Cleanup Co., is retiring effective May 16 […]

UCOR, the Amentum-Jacobs partnership in charge of remediation at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, earned 98% of total potential fee or $24.7 million, during a seven-month period ended Oct. 31, according to a scorecard released this week. The contractor, being succeeded by a joint venture made up of Amentum, Jacobs and […]

With declining demand for employee vaccination against COVID-19, the occupational medical provider serving the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington Site will soon be offering only one option, Moderna, for initial inoculations or booster shots. The provider of occupational medical services, HMP Corp. (HMPC), is dropping the Pfizer shot after March 24 and discontinuing […]

The Washington Department of Ecology says Congress’ Hanford’s fiscal 2022 appropriation is a few hundred million dollars short of meeting the site’s legal obligations for the year. At a Tuesday public Zoom briefing, the Washington State Department of Ecology put Hanford’s  congressional appropriation for fiscal 2022 at $2.95 billion, under the omnibus budget bill signed […]

The prime contractor for the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina is inviting inquiries from “minority serving institutions” interested in helping carry out research for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. Battelle Savannah River Alliance said in a March 11 notice on the federal procurement website (sam.gov) expressions of interest for such […]

Talks on the future of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina are continuing between the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration, Nicole Nelson-Jean, a veteran of both DOE branches, told the Waste Management Symposia late last week in Phoenix. Nelson-Jean, currently associate principal deputy assistant secretary for […]

Security guards and other plaintiffs suing President Joe Biden and the Department of Energy over COVID19 workforce vaccination requirements at the Hanford Site in Washington state have agreed to drop contractor executives from the litigation, according to a recent federal court filing. The plaintiffs will withdraw claims against Valerie McCain who heads Bechtel’s Waste Treatment […]

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 […]