Department of Energy

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Amentum-BWX Technologies team that runs the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, won 62% of its subjective fee for fiscal year 2021 and 72% of its overall fee, according to a Dec. 30  scorecard from the Department of Energy. The contractor took home about $3.3 million out of a potential […]

Over time, prominent historical figures such as Danish physicist Niels Bohr and New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra are said to have warned us that predictions are tough to make, especially about the future. So despite the obvious challenges of prognostication, Weapons Complex Monitor will open the year with a few observations about some big […]

The Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department were to hold an online public meeting Thursday evening to discuss cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under a 2016 consent agreement between the state and the feds that the state’s governor has lately criticized.  The meeting, run by the DOE Office of Environmental […]

The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management published draft solicitations Tuesday for two contracts potentially worth more than $7.7 billion combined at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky. The larger draft request for proposals (RFP) is for the potential $5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract, DOE said in a press release. […]

Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Amentum-BWX Technologies team that runs the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, won 62% of its subjective fee for fiscal year 2021 and 72% of its overall fee, according to a recently-released scorecard from the Department of Energy. The contractor took home about $3.3 million out of a potential $5.3 […]

The new management team is in place at the Idaho National Laboratory, according to the Idaho Environmental Coalition’s website. The change was effective Jan. 1. The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has a potential ten-year, $6.4 billion contract and took  over from Fluor Idaho.  Ty Blackford is the president and program manager at the new team, […]

The Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico has retained California-based Tetra Tech to work on a supplemental environmental impact statement and related documents for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The agreement for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) documents is potentially worth $1.8-million, according to a Dec. 27 task order award notice […]

A Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management program has identified 360 abandoned uranium mines on tribal lands across the western U.S. and is working with other government agencies to assess the safety and environmental risk posed by the sites, Legacy Management said in a press release this month. About 96% of the sites identified […]

The Department of Energy could solicit bids for long-term management and storage of elemental mercury in January, the Office of Environmental Management said in a procurement update after Christmas. After court action by gold mining companies forced DOE to drop earlier plans to designate Waste Control Specialists in West Texas as its preferred long-term storage […]

The head of the New Mexico Environment Department, James Kenney, supports a congressional committee’s call for the Government Accountability Office to examine practices at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office. Kenney wrote this week to the U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), backing a request this month by […]

In a development that could open the door for moving more federal radioactive waste to commercial disposal sites, the Department of Energy this week affirmed it would continue a 2019 that found certain less-risky high-level radioactive waste can be treated and disposed of as low-level waste. To that end, DOE on Wednesday issued a Federal […]

The top fed at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management expects the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project at the Hanford Site in Washington state to begin operating “within weeks.” Office of Environmental Management (EM) senior adviser William (Ike) White made the comment Monday during an online meeting of the chairs of the chairs of […]

The Department of Energy’s cleanup branch announced this week that Joel Bradburne is the new field office manager at the Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office, after acting as the top boss for operations in Ohio and Kentucky since Robert Edwards retired at the end of July. “In this role he will oversee the deactivation and demolition of […]

Following a nationwide injunction blocking contractors for the Department of Energy and other agencies from ordering workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to keep their jobs, several other vaccine lawsuits against specific DOE sites are shifting to federal appeals courts, legal filings this week show. In the matter of the nationwide injunction, the Justice Department […]

More than 90% of the federal employees and contract workers at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch have now been vaccinated against COVID-19, with more than 2,000 apparently still not taking the shot. “The vast majority of our [Environmental Management] EM workforce is vaccinated,” a spokesperson for the DOE Office of Environmental Management said […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site said this week that cleanup of the Plutonium Finishing Plant is basically finished, while a nuclear boss with the Washington Department of Ecology indicated there is a general agreement about future remediation needs at the former plutonium production hub. Those were a couple of […]

With about a month to go before the Department of Energy planned return-to-work, about 60% of a 10,000-strong workforce at the Hanford Site in Washington state was on premises each day, site manager Brian Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board this week. While the DOE on Dec. 3 rolled out a plan to get most […]

More than 90% of the workers for CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley were vaccinated prior to a Dec. 8 deadline set by the contractor at the West Valley Demonstration Project site in New York state, deputy general manager Kelly Wooley told an online Citizen Task Force meeting Wednesday night.  As a result, federal court orders […]

Weapons Complex Monitor will not publish on Dec. 24 in observance of the Christmas holiday or on Dec. 31 in observance of the New Year’s holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Monday, Jan. 3. Happy holidays!

A Department of Energy policy from 2019 that found certain less-risky high-level radioactive waste can be treated and disposed of as low-level waste was, on further review, upheld by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, the agency said Thursday. To that end, DOE on Wednesday issued a Federal Register notice affirming that this altered interpretation of […]

With about a month to go before the Department of Energy planned return-to-work, about 60% of a 10,000-strong workforce at the Hanford Site in Washington state was on premises each day, site manager Brian Vance told the Hanford Advisory Board Wednesday. While the DOE on Dec. 3 rolled out a plan to get most federal […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office could find out soon if the administration of President Joe Biden will back a second trial run moving certain high-level radioactive waste out of the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and disposing of it in a facility licensed for low-level waste. That was the word Monday from […]

More than 90% of the federal employees and contract workers at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch have now been vaccinated against COVID-19, with more than 2,000 apparently still not taking the shot. “The vast majority of our [Environmental Management] EM workforce is vaccinated,” a spokesperson for the DOE Office of Environmental Management said […]

The Department of Energy’s cleanup branch announced Monday that Joel Bradburne is the new field office manager at the Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office, after acting as the top boss for operations in Ohio and Kentucky since Robert Edwards retired at the end of July. “In this role he will oversee the deactivation and demolition of the […]

The top fed at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management expects the Tank-Side Cesium Removal project at the Hanford Site in Washington state to begin operating “within weeks.” Office of Environmental Management (EM) senior adviser William (Ike) White made the comment Monday during an online meeting of the chairs of the chairs of […]

There was “no impact” to Department of Environmental Management sites in Kentucky and Tennessee after a rash of unusual late-autumn tornados wrought death and destruction across the middle of the country over the weekend. “Thankfully, no impact to our EM sites,” a spokesperson for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) wrote Monday […]

A federal judge in Georgia this week blocked the Joe Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for contractors, almost exactly three months after Biden issued an executive order requiring shots for workers doing the government’s business. Most prime contractors at Department of Energy defense-nuclear sites had had their contracts modified to include a vaccine mandate well […]

Two years into the pandemic, the Department of Energy could see most of its federal employees return to their pre-COVID-19 work locations by mid-February, according to a Dec. 3 email message from agency leadership. The current “maximum telework” policy for DOE’s federal workforce will be phased out starting Jan. 18, Tarak Shah, chief of staff […]

Prospective bidders on the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar Hanford Integrated Tank Waste Disposition Contract in Washington state need not submit proposals before Christmas after all, thanks to an extension announced recently. The deadline for submitting bid proposals on the potential $45-billion contract is being extended by 17 days to Jan. 6, 2022, from Dec. 20, […]

Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, the same venture that last month challenged the Department of Energy’s issuance of the new Cleanup Contract, potentially worth $8.3 billion, at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, protested the contract again. A notice dated Dec. 3 on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) website showed another protest of the contract issued […]