Department of Energy

The Department of Energy has a nickname: “the Department of Everything,” the acting DOE nuclear cleanup boss told weapons complex citizen advisory board chairs Tuesday.   The DOE Office of Environmental Management senior adviser William (Ike) White retold the joke during a Washington, D.C., meeting. The description applies to an agency involved in issues ranging from […]

New Mexico’s public misgivings about nuclear waste is worrisome in Washington state where the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site is expected to become a big shipper to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in a few years and finish around 2050, a Hanford community representative said Tuesday. “There is one item that is hitting our screen […]

Bechtel National earned more than $6.5 million, or 83% of its total potential fee, for Department of Energy work in 2022 on the long-anticipated Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. Overall, the company earned $6.53 million out of a potential $7.87 million in fee for the calendar year ended […]

The procurement center for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental holds its first so-called “Reverse Industry Day,” online in May, a move sought by the Government Accountability Office. The virtual Reverse Industry Day is scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern Time on May 4, according to a Monday notice from the DOE Environmental Management Consolidated […]

The Department of Energy considers 2,000 gallons of tank waste earmarked for the test-bed initiative at the Hanford Site in Washington state to be low-level radioactive waste and not high-level waste, the agency wrote in a Federal Register notice published Monday morning. The notice, officially the final Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Determination, which is now […]

The federal watchdog for Department of Energy nuclear defense sites continues to pursue “an aggressive staffing plan” initiated over the past two years to make up for workforce brain-drain, according to an agency budget justification document issued last week. For fiscal year 2024, the administration of President Joe Biden (D) requested $47.2 million for the […]

The 1,200 or so employees at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will almost-certainly be retired by the time the Hanford Site in Washington state is fully cleaned up, based upon the budget request issued last week by the White House. The acting boss for Environment Management, said last fall the nuclear cleanup […]

The Department of Energy could spend $20 million on tearing down contaminated old facilities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California during fiscal 2024, or about $15 million less than what Congress approved for that purpose in fiscal 2023, according to the White House budget justification out last week. The DOE Office of Environmental […]

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., are roughly halfway through sinking a new underground utility shaft, site managers said Thursday. Shaft-sinking crews recently surpassed the midway point at 1,076-feet deep, the DOE and its new prime contractor, Bechtel affiliate Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, said in a March 9 […]

The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy would fall about 12% to around $1.56 billion in fiscal year 2024 if the White House’s latest federal spending request became law. That’s about $210 million less than the 2023 appropriation Congress provided in December in an omnibus spending bill for the part of […]

Work continues on transfer of the Savannah River Site landlord authority to the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, the top cleanup fed at the South Carolina complex told a DOE advisory panel this week. A joint team of DOE Office of Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) representatives should issue […]

President Joe Biden’s administration requested $47.2 million in funding for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for fiscal year 2024, up from $41.4 million this year. That is according to the 1,350-page appendix to the fiscal 2024 budget request released by the White House this week. Fiscal year 2024 begins Oct. 1. The Defense Nuclear […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has, after an extended outage, restarted a cesium pretreatment pilot project critical to waste solidification at the site, the DOE said this week. Tank operations manager Washington River Protection Solutions has resumed operation of the Tank-Side Cesium Removal System (TSCR) at Hanford, DOE […]

Bills pending before the South Carolina legislature could split the state regulator for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken into two separate organizations, a state agency official told the Citizens Advisory Board for the federal complex Monday. Susan Fulmer, manager of federal remediation for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental […]

A small business solicitation for nuclear cleanup, expected out within the next month, could be the only new one to hit the street by August, the Department of Energy Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said this week. The DOE previously said the request for proposals (RFP) Small Business Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning and Removal contract could […]

The 2024 budget for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state would grow to an unprecedented $3 billion or so from $2.7 billion this year, if President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget request became law. Overall, however, the administration’s budget request would keep funding at the DOE Office of Environmental Management about flat […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would, after helping prop up the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund again in fiscal 2024, effectively stay flat at $8.3 billion, according to White House budget request details released this week. The Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a hearing on the DOE spending request next […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 32 shipments of transuranic waste during February, according to the facility’s public website. The latest monthly figure shows progress over the prior year shipment period, but suggests DOE still must increase its rate over a sustained period to reach the annual levels the […]

The Department of Energy is “on track” to start solidifying liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state “no later than 2025,” the agency said in its latest budget request this week.  That timeline, less optimistic than the December 2023 goal the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management was targeting until a few months […]

The Department of Energy’s Huntington Ingalls-led legacy cleanup team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is being extended for another three years, a company official told a federal advisory board meeting this week. Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) “was recently notified that DOE will exercise the first option period under […]

The Department of Energy is “on track” to start solidifying liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state “no later than 2025,” the agency said in its latest budget request this week.  That timeline, less optimistic than the December 2023 goal the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management was targeting until a few months […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., received 32 shipments of transuranic waste during February, according to the facility’s public website. The latest monthly figure shows progress over the prior year shipment period, but suggests DOE still must increase its rate over a sustained period to reach the annual levels the […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would, after helping prop up the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund again in fiscal 2024, effectively stay flat at $8.3 billion, according to White House budget request details released this week. Defense Environmental Cleanup, the largest tranche of the nuclear cleanup budget, would be relatively flat […]

President Joe Biden’s administration requested $47.2 million in funding for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for fiscal year 2024, up from $41.4 million this year. That is according to the 1,350-page appendix to the fiscal 2024 budget request released by the White House this week. Fiscal year 2024 begins Oct. 1. The Defense Nuclear […]

The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy would fall about 12% to around $1.56 billion in fiscal year 2024 if the White House’s latest federal spending request became law. That’s about $210 million less than the 2023 appropriation Congress provided in December in an omnibus spending bill for the part of […]

Bills pending before the South Carolina legislature could split the state regulator for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken into two separate organizations, a state agency official told the Citizens Advisory Board for the federal complex Monday. Susan Fulmer, manager of federal remediation for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has, after an extended outage, restarted a cesium pretreatment pilot project critical to waste solidification at the site, the DOE said via Twitter Monday. Tank operations manager Washington River Protection Solutions has resumed operation of the Tank-Side Cesium Removal System (TSCR) at Hanford, […]

Details appended to President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget request show the budget for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state would grow to about $3 billion, up from $2.7 billion from the current fiscal year. “The fiscal year 2024 record Hanford budget request by President Biden of more than $3 billion is […]

Work continues on transfer of the Savannah River Site landlord authority to the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, the top cleanup fed at the South Carolina complex told a DOE advisory panel Monday. A joint team of DOE Office of Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) representatives should issue a […]

Employees of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who sued over the lab contractor’s COVID-19 vaccination policy have “narrowed the issues” to be addressed in ongoing settlement talks, according to a recent court filing. Attorneys for the management contractor UT-Battelle, composed of the University of Tennessee and Battelle, and the half-dozen employees who sued, should report […]