Department of Energy

The Department of Energy has until March or so to hammer out the details of a tax credits program for financially-troubled nuclear power plants after President Joe Biden signed a long-awaited infrastructure package into law this week. The bipartisan bill, which opens up around $6 billion in federal funding over a five-year period to provide […]

The Department of Energy expects to issue a finding by July 2022 on the practicality of solidifying 2,000 gallons of tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington using concrete-like grout, federal officials said during an online public meeting Thursday. But before DOE issues the finding, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was expected to check […]

Management and contractors at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state were targeted in a lawsuit filed this week by a group of about 290 employees resisting a federal order to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Security guards and various other employees at the site filed suit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court of […]

Former security guards and others at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site have withdrawn their federal lawsuit against current and former DOE contractors at the site, ending for now the plaintiffs’ complaint about serious misconduct such as “racketeering” at the former uranium enrichment plant. Plaintiffs filed a two-page notice of voluntary dismissal with the U.S. […]

Two contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio were expected to send home dozens of union employees this week with plans to fire them for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a local United Steelworkers president at the site said in a press release. Potentially, 50 United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-689 members […]

Holtec International’s hopes of taking over government payouts for spent fuel storage at a Massachusetts nuclear plant under decommissioning were dashed Monday when a federal judge ruled in favor of the site’s former owner, according to a new court filing. Although Holtec currently owns Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the plant’s former owner Boston Edison is […]

Fluor Idaho, which is winding down its $2.3-billion cleanup contract at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, paused a test run of the long-anticipated Integrated Waste Treatment Unit due to visible emissions coming from a stack during heat-up, a manager with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said via email Tuesday. As Fluor “started […]

A group called Oak Ridge Environmental Partners, has protested the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar remediation contract for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee awarded last month to an Amentum-Jacobs partnership. That’s according to a contract challenge dated Monday and posted to the Government Accountability Office’s website.  Debriefs were held last week on two major contracts […]

As expected, the Washington state attorney general has filed formal arguments saying there is no need for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit an appeals court ruling that backed a state law boosting workers’ compensation eligibility for Hanford Site employees with certain work-related illnesses. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed his 45-page “brief in opposition” […]

A three-judge panel at the New Mexico Court of Appeals has upheld a state environmental agency’s approval of the Department of Energy’s revised method for calculating underground waste volumes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The new counting method, approved as part of a state permit modification by the New Mexico Environment Department in December […]

The Department of Energy has until March or so to hammer out the details of a tax credits program for financially-troubled nuclear power plants after President Joe Biden signed a long-awaited infrastructure package into law Monday. The bipartisan bill, which opens up around $6 billion in federal funding over a five-year period to provide tax […]

The top federal manager at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said COVID-19 infection rates are falling around the complex near the Georgia line. “The good news is for the first time in some time we have no one in the hospital,” Michael Budney, manager of the DOE Office of Environmental […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico received 17 shipments of transuranic waste during October, according to figures posted on its public website. That means the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has now received 166 shipments of the defense-related waste so far this calendar year, a figure nearly identical to […]

Declining to block the lab’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a judge ruled Monday that Los Alamos National Laboratory Employees who will not take a required COVID-19 vaccine and are unsatisfied with receiving unpaid leave as their religious exemption from the shot must hash things out with the lab in arbitration. Pending the outcomes of other lawsuits […]

The Department of Energy does not expect a delay to a crucial cesium-removal demonstration at the Hanford Site’s tank farms, despite the discovery last month that parts of the system might be prone to leaks, an agency spokesperson said this week.  The “leak-tightness” issue, as the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) called it in […]

Before it even started, the Department of Energy this week cancelled a competition for a Savannah River Site management and operations contract worth billions, citing an increase of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons work at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is indefinitely delaying the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the […]

Centrus Energy, Bethesda, Md., on Wednesday posted net income of about $41.5 million, or $2.95 a share for the 2021 third quarter, up from a loss of $7 million or 83 cents a share, in the year-ago period.  Quarterly revenue was about $91 million, up from more than $57.5 million a year ago, mostly due […]

A United Steelworkers local president at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio expects about 100 of his members employed by cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth will be sent home in the coming week, with firings coming a few weeks afterward, for refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The workers who for various reasons don’t […]

Before it even started, the Department of Energy this week cancelled a competition for a Savannah River Site management and operations contract worth billions, citing an increase of National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear weapons work at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is indefinitely delaying the Final Request for Proposal (RFP) for the […]

Ninety people suing the contractor over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate lack valid legal arguments or safety concerns and “simply do not want to do what is being asked,” the manager of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina said in a legal filing this week. That is the thrust of Fluor-led Savannah […]

The Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons remediation contractor at the Los Alamos National Lab will resume normal operations at the lab’s Area G next week, DOE’s local cleanup fed told a citizens advisory board this week. “We are resuming normal operations, processing operations at Area G next week,” Michael Mikolanis, manager of the DOE Environmental Management […]

Under current projections, the Department of Energy could process nearly all of the salt waste inventory from 43 high-level radioactive waste tanks at the Savannah River Site by 2033, the top official for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management there said recently. The 2033 date cited by Michael Budney, manager of the Savannah River Operations […]

The Santa Fe-based Southwest Research and Information Center, a frequent critic of the Department of Energy’s operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, has appealed an Oct. 27 ruling by the New Mexico Environment Department authorizing completion of a new underground utility shaft at the transuranic waste disposal facility. Southwest Research Information Center (SRIC) attorney […]

As soon as next week, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should issue a draft solicitation for a Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said recently. The draft request for proposals (RFP) should show up sometime between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17, the agency’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office […]

In 2020, Dan Brouillette, then-President Donald Trump’s second energy secretary, allegedly violated the Hatch Act — the law that prevents public servants from campaigning for or supporting candidates for office, the special counsel said in a report this week.  Brouillette and 12 other Trump administration officials were implicated in the findings published Tuesday. According to […]

It will be weeks or maybe even early 2022 before the Department of Energy shares more details about how it will auction off $6 billion worth of credits to struggling nuclear power plants over the next five years, a DOE official said this week. “It’ll really be a little while before we have the details […]

The volume of low-level radioactive waste shipped to the Nevada National Security Site from Department of Energy cleanup sites is picking up again after dipping to half of its normal level of more than 1 million cubic feet per year during the pandemic, an agency official at the site told the Nevada Site Specific Advisory […]

More than 90% of the workers for both the Department of Energy environmental management field office and the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, are now vaccinated against COVID-19, a federal official told a DOE advisory committee Wednesday. In addition, cleanup of radioactive contamination on a stretch of a […]

As soon as next week, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should issue a draft solicitation for a Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said recently. The draft request for proposals (RFP) should show up sometime between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17, the agency’s nuclear-weapons cleanup office […]

It will be weeks or maybe even early 2022 before the Department of Energy shares more details about how it will auction off $6 billion worth of credits to struggling nuclear power plants over the next five years, a DOE official said Wednesday. “It’ll really be a little while before we have the details of […]