Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

New Mexico-based Department of Energy contractor Strategic Management Solutions hired Michael Nosbisch as its director of project controls, effective this week. A former infantry officer in the U.S.Marine Corps who attained the rank of captain before leaving the service in 1994, Nosbisch has more than 30 years of management experience, according to a Strategic Management […]

A week after the Department of Energy awarded a Jacobs-led joint venture remediation business potentially worth $6.4-billion over 10 years, no contract challenges had been announced on the Government Accountability Office website. The Tennessee-based winner, the Idaho Environmental Coalition, comprises Jacobs and North Wind Portage along with three teaming subcontractors: Navarro Research and Engineering, Oak […]

There have been 4,867 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management workforce since the pandemic took root in the United States in early 2020, according to figures provided Thursday by the agency’s cleanup branch. This week there are 47 active confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the Environmental Management (EM) […]

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., shipped low-level waste to the Nevada National Security Site in May for the first time in nearly two years after the desert site reinstated a certification that was yanked in 2019 following disclosure that Y-12 had sent 32 containers worth of improperly labelled waste to the […]

A lawsuit by a fired ventilation project subcontractor against the Department of Energy’s prime for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has been settled, according to papers filed in a federal district court in New Mexico. The litigation brought by Christensen Building Group and its Critical Applications Alliance venture against Nuclear Waste Partnership was dismissed by […]

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. , a former Hanford prime contractor, has agreed to pay a $3.04 million settlement to the feds for falsely and knowingly claiming two subcontractors were in Historically Underutilized Business Zones. However, CH2M Hill does not admit guilt in agreeing to the payment. Until its contract expired early this year, CH2M […]

A federal district court in New Mexico has set a Nov. 17 settlement conference for federal and state agencies to bridge their differences surrounding a 2016 consent order on cleanup of legacy waste around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar issued a May 18 order scheduling the formal […]

Thanks to an easy victory in Tuesday’s special election, the Democratic Party maintains control of Mexico’s 1st Congressional District seat vacated in March when Deb Haaland resigned to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of interior. Democrat Melanie Ann Stansbury, a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, won 60% of the vote to defeat […]

The Department of Energy said this week that rubble removal at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant in Washington state is resuming after an extended COVID-19 hiatus. After taking down the last major processing facility at the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), DOE said last February it anticipated removing all the rubble from the site by […]

At deadline Friday, President Joe Biden’s administration had yet to publish a detailed Department of Energy budget request for fiscal 2022, but figures provided May 28 by the Office of Management and Budget show that the White House is willing to spend big on nuclear-weapons cleanup. The nearly $7.6-billion fiscal 2022 request for the DOE […]

The Department of Energy this week rolled out the request for proposals for its much-anticipated long-term management and operations contract for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which between legacy cleanup obligations and national security work figures to be more in demand than ever over the next decade.  The final request for proposals […]

The Joe Biden administration Friday afternoon proposed level-funding the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management at about $7.6-billion during fiscal 2022, which begins in a little more than four months. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told Congress recently that the request for the budget year starting Oct. 1 would “sustain” cleanup of nuclear sites […]

The Department of Energy has named Brian Stickney deputy manager and chief operating officer for the Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site in Washington state effective this week. Stickney had been acting as deputy manager since October following the retirement of Joe Franco, Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance announced in a May 19 email […]

The Department of Energy and contractor Fluor Idaho said in a Tuesday press release the final shipment of radioactive waste has been placed into the 97-acre Subsurface Disposal Area at the Idaho National Laboratory. The disposal area, which began accepting waste in the 1950s and has since accepted laboratory-generated waste and shipments from the Rocky […]

Current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio this week filed a motion to dismiss one of the two class action lawsuits brought against those companies by local residents following the May 2019 disclosure of radioactive contamination of a public school outside the fence. The dismissal motion arrived at about […]

It could be late fall before New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney makes a ruling on whether the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant can complete development of a new underground shaft. That is based on timelines allotted by the New Mexico Environment Department, a state agency spokesperson said in a Monday email. Up […]

A regional group to promote communities around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has decided to close up shop. “We are looking toward officially dissolving by June 30,” Darien Fernandez, the Taos Town Council member and chair of the Regional Coalition  of LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] Communities, said by […]

After a lawsuit by gold companies forced it to back off its initial selection of a commercial site in Texas for long-term storage of elemental mercury, the Department of Energy is again shopping around for a contractor and Waste Control Specialists is again one of the finalists. That is a key takeaway from DOE’s notice […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico now has a public website about its efforts to remediate contamination along a public road in Los Alamos County. Radioactive contamination was discovered in February 2020 within a 28-acre parcel of land along DP Road that DOE had already […]

The next big contract procurement update from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should be out by Independence Day, according to a recent notice. The next quarterly procurement update from the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center will be posted within about 30 to 45 calendar days, meaning it should be out by July […]

After much anticipation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management on Thursday awarded a potentially 10-year, $6.4 billion cleanup contract at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition. The team, chosen from a field of five bidders, includes Dallas-based Jacobs, North Wind Portage, and small business teaming subcontractors Navarro, Oak Ridge […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management plans to relocate some transuranic waste from the Nevada National Security Site to the Idaho National Laboratory where it will be prepared for eventual shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The transuranic material is what “we refer to as the Nevada spheres,” Robert […]

For the second time in three weeks, the number of confirmed active cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management worksites is below triple-digits. There are currently 65 active COVID-19 cases in the Environmental Management (EM) complex, a DOE spokesperson said by email Thursday. It represents a big drop from the […]

Bechtel, Reston, Va., and Fluor, Irving, Texas, are leading separate bids for the potentially $10-year, $21.5 billion management and operations contract for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, people familiar with the competitive landscape said this week. Amentum, Germantown, Md., is also in the mix as a partner, one of these people said. The […]

Effective Tuesday, May 25 fully-vaccinated workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state will no longer need to wear a face covering, the site’s manager Brian Vance said in an online memo to employees Wednesday. The directive is slated to go into effect about a week after all-hands letter from Vance to […]

Kirk Lachman, a longtime hand around the Department of Energy’s weapons complex and current field office manager of the agency’s Office of Environmental Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is retiring June 27. Lachman will be retiring from DOE after 30 years of federal service, a spokesperson for the agency said […]

A Northern Arizona University researcher, Michael Ketterer, recently reasserted findings from 2019 that radioactive contamination from the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio poses a concern for people outside the fence, and local leaders are using his analysis to press for federal money to replace a shuttered school. In an April 28 letter to […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 27 shipments of transuranic waste in April, which marks its busiest month since the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) logged five months in 2020 when it received 20 or more shipments. October was the busiest month, […]