Morning Briefing - June 18, 2025
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June 17, 2025

Southern Ohio Cleanup to take Portsmouth reins Oct. 1

By ExchangeMonitor

Amentum-led Southern Ohio Cleanup Co. has unveiled a website laying out its transition to become remediation contractor at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site.

DOE’s Office of Environmental Management awarded the contract, potentially worth about $5.9 billion over a decade, in June 2023. But it only greenlighted the start of transition this month following the award of a companion contract for depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion work at both Portsmouth and the Paducah Site in Kentucky.

The transition should be complete around Oct. 1, according to the website.

“I am excited that we’ve begun the contract transition for the Portsmouth Demolition and Decommissioning (D&D) contract,” Southern Ohio Cleanup Co. (SOCCO) President and CEO Greg Wilkett said in a transition update.

“Over the next four months, SOCCo will prepare to assume this important contract,” Wilkett said. “Most importantly, we will be meeting with the current PORTS employees and union representatives to listen and learn,” Wilkett added.

Wilkett is no stranger to the current workforce at the former gaseous diffusion plant, having served as site project director for the incumbent environmental prime, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth.

Other top bosses at SOCCO include decontamination and decommissioning manager Maurice (Hoss) Brown; a 32-year-old nuclear cleanup veteran of sites such as Rocky Flats in Colorado and Oak Ridge in Tennessee. Another Fluor-BWXT holdover, Paul Larsen is staying on as manager of the Onsite Waste Disposal Facility. J.D. Chiou is SOCCO’s environmental remediation and regulatory manager. Chiou has been at Portsmouth for 12 years and  is the site’s Superfund and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act expert, according to the SOCCO website.

SOCCO is made up of partners Amentum, Fluor and Cavendish Nuclear. 

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NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

DOE spent fuel lead Brinton accused of second luggage theft.



by @BenjaminSWeiss, confirming today's reports with warrant from Las Vegas Metro PD.

Waste has been Emplaced! 🚮

We have finally begun emplacing defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste in Panel 8 of #WIPP.

Read more about the waste emplacement here: https://wipp.energy.gov/wipp_news_20221123-2.asp

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