Department of Energy

In a milestone for U.S. nuclear-weapons cleanup in Washington State, the Department of Energy since Jan. 26 has prepared 50,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Site for solidification into stable, storable glass as soon as December 2023. By the end of the year, DOE and its contractors hope the new Tank Side […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has hauled away the last of demolition debris from buildings torn down last year at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in Southern California, according to a Tuesday release. Trucks carrying the waste from buildings within DOE’s Energy Technology Engineering Center northwest of Los Angeles rolled out […]

The Government Accountability Office has denied a protest by a group called Oak Ridge Environmental Partners that challenged the Department of Energy’s  $8.3-billion Cleanup Contract issued in October to United Cleanup Oak Ridge, a team led by Amentum and Jacobs, the current incumbents at the Tennessee site. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) notice dated Tuesday […]

A panel at the Department of Energy has authorized startup of the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project, according to the latest available weekly staff report on operations at the Hanford Site in Washington state from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.  “The DOE Startup Authorization Authority for the TSCR [Tank-Side Cesium Removal] system approved its startup,” […]

Unlike many other federal agencies, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board did not receive any supplemental funding during fiscal 2021 to ensure emergency operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a financial report released Monday. While the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) kept running without money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security […]

The Department of Energy is tinkering with the way it will judge proposals for a potentially $5.87-billion Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, according to a notice released Friday. The agency is considering the changes after last week’s virtual one-on-one meetings with potential bidders who responded to the draft solicitation, which […]

Six employees at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who refused COVID-19 vaccine are assured of their day in court after obtaining a right to sue from a federal agency, the judge in the case confirmed Monday. The six plaintiffs filed an amended complaint Jan. 4 against the University of Tennessee- Battelle partnership (UT-Battelle) operating the […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico won’t launch its regular winter maintenance outage this month or next, deferring such work until fall, when an electrical substation was scheduled to be replaced. The annual maintenance outage, together with replacement of the roughly 30-year old surface Substation 3 at the Waste Isolation […]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told the CBS’s news program “Face the Nation” Sunday he is “a big admirer” of U.S. District Court Judge Michelle Childs and believes the U.S. Supreme Court could benefit from someone, like the federal court judge from South Carolina, outside the usual Ivy League feeder system. “I can’t think of a […]

The Department of Energy’s prime contractor for the Savannah River Site has agreed to a plan with federal and South Carolina regulators for final cleanup of a 25-mile stretch of radiologically contaminated stream. The affected area includes the Lower Three Runs stream, which begins near the center of the federal complex near the Georgia line, […]

On Jan. 21, a federal court in Texas temporarily blocked the Joe Biden administration’s requirement that federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment. In the decision, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown in the Southern District of Texas ruled against the administration’s vaccine policy, which stems from executive orders issued by […]

The Department of Energy’s $7.5-billion nuclear cleanup office appears to be inching closer to a small business solicitation for Technical Assistance Contracts for three or more field sites, according to a procurement website that went online within the past week. The Office of Environmental Management (EM) previously said in a Dec. 27 notice to expect […]

A U.S. district judge in Georgia, who last month blocked the Joe Biden administration from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate aimed at government contractors, declined Jan. 21 to wade into issues surrounding contractors that on their own require workers to be inoculated. At the same time, U.S. District Judge Stan Baker in the Southern District […]

In addition to claiming more than 800,000 American lives, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused “massive economic disruptions in the public and private sector,” which bolsters the case for requiring most employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated, U.S. government attorneys said in a brief filed with the Eleventh U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The […]

North Wind Dynamics is poised to start a $135-million contract in charge of Infrastructure Services at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. North Wind is “currently in transition” and will officially become the services contractor on Feb. 18, a company spokesperson said via email Wednesday. A DOE contract chart updated last week shows […]

Despite some court setbacks for federal vaccination orders, a top manager with the Department of Energy’s Jacobs-led cleanup contractor at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York said Wednesday his organization is sticking with its COVID-19 vaccination mandate. “We have actually chosen to maintain that mandate,” CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley’s president and general […]

Local governments and school boards are working with a Washington, D.C.-based interest group to ensure the two highly-contaminated nuclear sites in their areas receive Payments in Lieu of Taxes in the fiscal 2023 budget request the Joe Biden administration sends to Congress in several weeks. The locals, with support of the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA), […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina should be ready to start shipping certain transuranic waste from downblended plutonium to its underground disposal site in New Mexico by the end of the summer, an agency official told the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board Tuesday. The Savannah River Site (SRS) goal is […]

Hundreds of federal and contract workers at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup wing continue to test positive weekly, but at least for this week, the figures have retreated from their recent peak. There were 560 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among members of the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM), a spokesperson wrote Thursday in […]

The Department of Energy did not reject any information requests from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for the six-months ending Dec. 31, the safety watchdog told Congress this month, which amounts to zero refusals during the first year of the Joe Biden administration. “The Board has no denials of access to information to report […]

At industry’s recommendation, the Department of Energy now says a bidder’s technical and management approach will count more than past performance in a competition for the next depleted uranium hexafluoride and site support contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. But the bidder’s key personnel remain the most important […]

The Department of Energy did not reject any information requests from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board for the six-months ending Dec. 31, the safety watchdog told Congress this month, which amounts to zero refusals during the first year of the Joe Biden administration. “The Board has no denials of access to information to report […]

In addition to claiming more than 800,000 American lives, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused “massive economic disruptions in the public and private sector,” which bolsters the case for requiring most employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated, U.S. government attorneys said in a brief filed with the Eleventh U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The […]

The Salt Waste Processing Facility, offline since late October at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, should restart in a couple of weeks, an executive with Parsons Corp., which built the plant told an advisory panel Tuesday. “We are shut down currently,” Mike Pittman, a Parsons vice president and project manager […]

The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina should be ready to start shipping certain transuranic waste from downblended plutonium to its underground disposal site in New Mexico by the end of the summer, an agency official told the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board Tuesday. The Savannah River Site (SRS) goal is […]

The Department of Energy’s $7.5-billion nuclear cleanup office appears to be inching closer to a small business solicitation for Technical Assistance Contracts for three or more field sites, according to a procurement website that went online within the past week. The Office of Environmental Management (EM) previously said in a Dec. 27 notice to expect […]

On Friday, a federal court in Texas temporarily blocked the Joe Biden administration’s requirement that federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment. In the decision, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown in the Southern District of Texas ruled against the administration’s vaccine policy, which stems from executive orders issued by Biden […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Advisory Board will stick around for at least two more years, according to a Federal Register notice published last week. The advisory board is being renewed for a two-year period that began Jan. 14, according to the Jan. 21 notice, which said the action is taken under the Federal […]

Troy Wade, a Reagan-era assistant secretary of energy for defense programs and a fixture for decades at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site, died Jan. 16 at his home in Nevada, according to local media and the site. He was 87. Scott Wade, Troy’s son, confirmed his father’s death to the local […]

The liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is seeking expressions of interest from firms that could build three new saltsone disposal units at the federal complex near the Georgia line. Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) posted the notice Thursday on the government procurement website, SAM.gov for Saltstone […]