Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

Uncle Sam has long wanted federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated against COVID-19 but now is growing more insistent, with infections on the rise around Department of Energy nuclear installations. President Joe Biden this week reinstated mandatory mask wearing in government buildings and imposed a series of safety measures and restrictions for federal workers […]

The House of Representatives voted 219 to 208 Thursday on a party line to approve a package of seven fiscal 2022 spending bills including one that sets the budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management at $7.76 billion. The bill, which includes DOE along with the other agencies as part of H.R. […]

A federal district court in Ohio has said attorneys involved in a lawsuit over off-site radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio should explore potential mediation soon. A notice published Friday by Richard Nagel, the federal clerk for the U.S. District Court in Southern Ohio, listed a case brought by Ursula […]

Developing two new deep-mine panels for disposal of transuranic waste at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., should not entail new environmental risks, according to a document posted last week on the procurement website for a new prime contract. Excavation and use of two replacement panels, dubbed Panels 11 and […]

The Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board heard Monday the proposed fiscal 2022 budget proposal for the Department of Energy site in South Carolina includes $9 million toward development of a new emergency operations center. The minibus appropriations package passed by the full House of Representatives Thursday also includes the $9 million for the new […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has opened a training center in Carlsbad, N.M., to prepare staff for resumption of shipments of remote-handled waste at the underground disposal facility, the agency tweeted this week. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has not taken shipments of remote-handled (RH) transuranic waste using RH-72B casks since […]

Testing done in recent weeks by the Department of Energy at the Hanford Site in Washington state has turned up no signs the foul odor encountered by workers around a tank farm was ammonia from tank vapors, an agency spokesperson said this week. Following last month’s incident three employees were checked out at a Richland, […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries this week officially made Kimberly Lebak the full-time president and general manager of the joint venture in charge of legacy cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Lebak has run the Huntington Ingalls-led Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) since May when she stepped in for […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has made no decision yet on a Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board proposal to allow members to serve beyond their term expiration dates in order to keep the panel near full strength. The Office of Environmental Management (EM) headquarters is reviewing the Savannah River Site (SRS) […]

A roughly $1-trillion infrastructure bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators could provide Superfund sites with more than $3 billion for cleanup over the next five years. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would increase federal investment in projects including roads, bridges and broadband —and quicken cleanup of environmental contamination through $3.5 billion […]

John Howanitz will be promoted to president of Bechtel National’s nuclear, security and environmental global business effective Sept. 1, replacing the retiring Barbara Rusinko as the head of the Reston, Va.-based company’s nuclear business with the Department of Energy and other agencies worldwide.  The company announced the impending change Wednesday in a press release. Howanitz […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 26 shipments of transuranic waste during June, according to its public website. Eight were received from the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee but the rest traveled from the Idaho National Laboratory. During the first half of 2021 the underground disposal site had at […]

The Department of Energy in amendments made this week to its ongoing solicitation for a new multibillion-dollar prime contract at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is increasing the performance fee cap to 7% from 5%. The amendments came out after some prospective bidders for the potential $3-billion, 10-year prime contract for the […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management appointed Michael Mikolanis to lead its Los Alamos National Laboratory field office in New Mexico, a DOE advisory board learned Wednesday. The Mikolanis appointment was announced to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board by Lee Bishop, DOE’s deputy designated federal officer, during a virtual meeting. Mikolanis, […]

Norbert Doyle, a top acquisition executive at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, is taking a two-year posting as a faculty member at the National Defense University’s National War College in Washington, D.C. Although still an Office of Environmental Management (EM) employee, Doyle will serve as the DOE faculty chair at the National […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee verbally voted Thursday morning to advance Department of Energy nominees for general counsel and two other posts for consideration by the full Senate.  During the business meeting, the committee endorsed the nomination of Samuel Walsh to be DOE’s general counsel, Andrew Light to be assistant secretary for international […]

Arguments in Swift & Staley Contract Case Proceed  Oral arguments were set  yesterday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., as Department of Energy contractor Swift & Staley seeks to hold onto the $160-million Paducah Infrastructure Support Services Contract in Kentucky, which it won in December before the Small Business Administration ruled […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted 23-3 to approve the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022, the panel said in a Thursday press release about the legislation that authorizes more than $20 billion in spending for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The committee’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the policy bill that sets […]

Wednesday’s deadline for members of the House of Representatives to submit amendments to a six-bill spending package that includes the House Appropriations Committee’s 2022 spending proposal for the Department of Energy, appears to have passed without effortrs to dramatically alter the chamber’s nearly $7.8-billion budget for the Office of Environmental Management. A deadline scan of […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s spending bill would provide the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio with more funds than the White House sought for community and regulatory support, including setting up a liaison to localities around the former gaseous diffusion plant, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said Monday. The fiscal 2022 appropriations package for Energy […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that runs the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, this week asked a federal court in New Mexico to dismiss a $500,000 lawsuit filed by an African American security employee who claims he was bypassed for a promotion due to his race. While the Amentum-BWX Technologies partnership acknowledges plaintiff […]

The Department of Energy this week publicly released its long-delayed draft Record of Decision for a proposed new landfill to handle low-level radioactive waste from building demolition at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The 350-page draft on the Environmental Management Disposal Facility, dated June 22, now will undergo a 60-day review, by the Tennessee […]

The House Appropriations Committee proposed a marginal increase for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, to $7.8 billion from the $7.6 in 2021, as part of a 2022 spending bill sent to the House floor Friday. The full committee advanced the energy and water spending package on a 33-to-24 vote party line vote, […]

Two protests filed with the Government Accountability Office over long-term Department of Energy contracts awards, each worth more than a billion dollars, were withdrawn this week. Bechtel-led Idaho Remediation on Tuesday withdrew its challenge of a $6.4-billion nuclear contract at the Idaho National Laboratory awarded in May to a Jacobs-led team, Idaho Environmental Coalition.  “The […]

A coalition of more than 30 citizen groups, called the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, wants President Joe Biden to nominate a Department of Energy assistant secretary for environmental management committed to cleanup and environmental justice, according to a Monday letter. Whoever gets picked to run the $7-billion-plus DOE Office of Environmental Management must have a […]

There has been no big retirement spike among federal employees at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office during the COVID-19 pandemic but officials who spoke at a virtual hearing this week fear that could change.  The assessment was offered by William “Ike” White, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, in response to a question […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shipped off a bottle of unidentified liquid found around a pothole along a contaminated stretch of a public road for analysis. On July 8, Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) discovered an intact 500-milliliter amber glass bottle containing […]

The environmental regulator in New Mexico should decide by this fall whether to allow the Department of Energy and its contractor to resume digging a new underground shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant this fall, a state official told the New Mexico Legislature’s Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee this week.  The final decision by […]