Publications: Weapons Cleanup Monitor

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state should transport between 10 and 20 shipments of transuranic material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico starting in 2028. The vast majority (99%) of the defense-related transuranic waste now at Hanford’s central plateau, in the 200 West Area, will be hauled to the […]

A three-day New Mexico Environment Department hearing on the need for a new underground shaft for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant kicked off this week with a lawyer for DOE saying the case is not about a life extension for the transuranic waste disposal site. The hearing is about efforts to “restore […]

Leo Sain, a senior executive at Amentum who has led joint ventures across the Department of Energy weapons complex, has died at age 73. Most recently Sain served as the decommissioning and demolition and waste management sector lead at Amentum. He died May 13, according to an obituary posted by Weatherford Mortuary in Oak Ridge, […]

While the numbers won’t be out for another week, House and Senate committees used Wednesday hearings to press Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and other DOE officials about the progress of nuclear cleanup. During a four-hour hearing before the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, Granholm said the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2022 budget request […]

The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is often described in Congressional hearings and other forums as one the most costly and complex cleanup projects in North America — if not the world. But it is this complexity that oddly appeals to David Bowen, who became the Washington state Department of Ecology’s nuclear […]

Profits were about flat at Dallas-based Jacobs in its second fiscal quarter that ended April 2, something the international engineering and construction services company attributed to its March acquisition of a 65% stake in PA Consulting, which advises energy, defense and government clients. During the same period last year, Jacobs suffered a $122 million net […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility, the centerpiece of Department of Energy plans to empty tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina of 36 million gallons of radioactive waste, is back in operation after shutting down in late March. The Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) resumed its work on a limited basis May 3, […]

Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites were tracking 76 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday, down 30 from last week and the lowest weekly case count since the fall. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) case numbers were last this low during early October. The figures provided via email from an EM […]

The Department of Energy considers construction of a new 2.2-million cubic yard landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee vital to cleanup of contaminated sites the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a federal official said Wednesday.  The new onsite landfill will “make sure that we have enough disposal capacity,” […]

The Department of Energy is picking up its option to keep Centerra Group on through at least Oct. 7 as provider of security at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina while the agency continues to review a 10-year, $1-billion follow-on contract awarded in February to Securitas CIS. A DOE spokesperson said in an email […]

Early in-person voting started last week and runs through May 29, for the June 1 special election in New Mexico’s Congressional District 1, which is home to the Sandia National Laboratories. The seat was vacated by Rep. Debra Haaland (D), she was confirmed as the Joe Biden administration’s secretary of interior on March 16. The […]

Swift & Staley’s share of the Portsmouth Site’s infrastructure services contractor helped make the company ineligible for a small-business set-aside contract at Department of Energy’s Paducah Site, according to a ruling made public this week by the Small Business Administration. Swift & Staley’s annual receipts alone did not push it past a $41.5 million size […]

Waste Control Specialists in West Texas could remain home for up to 74 containers of radioactive waste, which Texas authorities want to evict, for three more years, under an extension announced Thursday by the Department of Energy. The DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Los Alamos field office issued a task order to keep Waste Control […]

An April 16 staff report by a federal watchdog questions if the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration have fully learned lessons stemming from a drum breach and radiation release that shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in February 2014. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) […]

The president of News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) Glenn Morgan is leaving his post with the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and taking a job with Huntington Ingalls Industries. “I wanted to let you know that I have been called upon to fill a corporate position for […]

Fluor, Irving, Texas, suffered a net loss from continuing operations of $61 million compared with a net gain of $21.6 million during the first quarter of 2020, the international engineering and construction company said Friday. A $68-million expense linked to development of its NuScale small modular reactor business, and other costs, contributed to the slide, […]

The next several weeks could be a busy time for the Department of Energy’s procurement in the weapons complex. The long-awaited draft request for proposals (RFP) for the potential 10-year, $21.5-billion operations contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was issued last week. The draft RFP virtual meetings kick off May 11. The […]

Leaving Department of Energy contractors in charge of auditing costs ultimately paid by the government has created something of a “fox-guarding-the-henhouse problem,” the DOE’s Office of Inspector General said recently. As a result, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) wants DOE to hire dozens of independent federal auditors to overcome shortcomings in the “cooperative audit” […]

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Energy Communities Alliance and six other groups Monday urged Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to set up a Nuclear Waste Management office to oversee both civilian- and defense-nuclear waste. The federal government “has effectively failed to pursue a nuclear waste program for over a decade,” according to the letter. “We […]

BWX Technologies is among the companies in the hunt for high-dollar Department of Energy contracts, president and CEO Rex Geveden said in a conference call this week with financial analysts. “We now have four large DOE proposals submitted and anticipate three of those contracts to be announced sometime later this year,” Geveden told Wall Street […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Kairos Power are cooperating to develop a low-power test reactor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The government-owned electric utility, which holds an early site permit for a small modular reactor from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will provide Kairos Power with engineering, operating and licensing […]

Having lost its appeal before a Small Business Administration panel and hoping to retain a $160-million Department of Energy infrastructure support contract for the Paducah Site awarded in December, Swift & Staley has taken its case to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. At issue is whether the company was small enough to […]

The Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology have been involved in so-called “holistic” talks with the aid of a federal mediator since June 2020, the parties told a federal court Friday. With a confidentiality deal in place, publicly the parties have said little, other than that talks are ongoing, with the […]

The Department of Energy is making plans for replacement of the emergency operations center at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina by late 2028, according to one of the procurement documents published last week. Last week DOE issued its draft request for proposals for the Savannah River Site Operations Acquisition, a contract which could […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told a House Appropriations panel Thursday that she supports a new on-site landfill at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and that the Department of Energy is studying contamination at a school near the Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee called Granholm in to […]

The Justice Department has formally closed out its fraud case against Mission Support Alliance, the joint venture that formally provided landlord services at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, according to a settlement filed last week with a federal court in Washington state. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson of the Eastern District […]

The number of confirmed active cases of COVID-19 at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup worksites had as of Thursday declined to 106 from 132 last week, but the Hanford Site in Washington state is warning workers not to grow complacent. The figure for the entire DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) complex, provided by […]