Department of Energy

A bipartisan group of four senators reintroduced a bill to protect whistleblowers at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from retaliation, according to a recent press release. Before the Senate adjourned last week, Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ron Wyden (D-Wash.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) announced that they filed their […]

With a Friday deadline looming, the Fluor-led operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is making plans to fire employees who have refused COVID-19 vaccinations while also issuing a final plea for the holdouts to get inoculated. In a Monday staff email, viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing and […]

Although the buildings have been torn down, there is still plenty of remediation work left for the Department of Energy in coming years at its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a spokesman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said. “The soil cleanup is expected to finish around 2034,” Russ Edmondson, a […]

As of Sept. 30, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has recorded more than 6,900 cases of COVID-19 and dozens of fatalities within the weapons complex since the pandemic began, according to data provided Friday by a spokesperson. The number of deaths is now 41 among federal and contractor employees in the DOE […]

An article in the Oct. 6 edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing [“DOE Completes Startup Testing for Liquid Disposal at Waste Treatment Plant”] should have said that by December, Hanford crews will gradually start heating up the first melter at the Low Activity Waste Facility to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

While no details were provided, a Department of Energy spokesperson officially confirmed late Friday Centerra will continue at least in the short term as security contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. “Yes, they’ll be extended,” the spokesperson said. The federal agency is not working today in observance of the […]

Department of Energy contractor officers should by Friday, and unilaterally, if necessary, modify the agency’s existing major site contracts to include a COVID-19 mandate, according to long-awaited guidance published Wednesday by DOE. The directive applies to “Management and Operating (M&O) contracts, major site/facility contracts and onsite support service contracts,” the agency wrote in the guidance. […]

A federal judge nixed a fishing expedition for a big tranche of data sought by people who live near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site and who are trying to organize a class action lawsuit against eight current and former DOE contractors at the rural Ohio site. In a mid-September court filing,U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth […]

More than 60 members of the Washington state legislature this week asked President Joe Biden to reconsider the Department of Justice’s challenge to an “overwhelmingly bipartisan state law to provide industrial insurance coverage to workers made sick” while doing cleanup work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In 2018 the legislature easily passed HB […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy has finished tearing down the last of 18 buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif., the agency said this week. The last of the buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), Sodium Pump Test Facility, came down […]

Although about 30% of the 1,050-person workforce at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina can qualify for retirement over the next three years, the research facility will grow before 2030, a lab manager said at an industry conference in Knoxville, Tenn., this week. The lab, which largely focuses on technology […]

The Department of Energy should award a new long-term contract for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by the end of the year, agency officials said at an annual conference sponsored by the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association Wednesday. Angela Watmore, the acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management for […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General has a busy fiscal 2022 schedule of audits and inspections planned for projects affecting the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Last week, the DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its work plan for the fiscal year that began Oct. […]

The Southern Bench fire, which burned about 1,000 acres since late August, has been put out by firefighters from the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the operations contractor for the Nevada Site said this week. The Southern Bench wildland fire is now “fully contained and extinguished,” […]

The Department of Energy’s advisory board for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio postponed a meeting scheduled this week in Piketon, Ohio and planned to reschedule it, according to a statement from the administrative contractor for the board. A Monday email from EHI Consultants, on behalf of the advisory board cited two factors. First, “the high […]

Akima Intra-Data has protested the Department of Energy’s award of a potential five-year, $135-million contract last month to North Wind for Portsmouth Infrastructure Support Services in Ohio. The Akima bid protest filed with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Monday is scheduled to be decided by Jan. 12, according to a notice on the GAO website. […]

Personnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site recently tested a drainage system that will funnel byproducts of liquid waste cleanup to an outbuilding from the Low Activity Waste Facility, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said this week. The system includes large tanks and miles of pipes inside the Low-Activity Waste Facility […]

Ty Blackford, who was CEO of the Jacobs subsidiary formerly in charge of cleanup at the Central Plateau of the Hanford Site in Washington state, is leading transition efforts for the Jacobs-led joint venture scheduled to take over remediation for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory by Jan. 1. That is according to a […]

The Department of Energy should award a new long-term contract for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by the end of the year, agency officials told an annual conference sponsored by the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association Wednesday. Angela Watmore, the acting deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management for the […]

Nobody was hurt Monday morning when a truck caught fire in the 200 East Area of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to a notice posted on the website for the federal property. The fire occurred under the hood of the truck loaded with an empty container from the Site’s Environmental […]

Department of Energy contractor officers should by Friday, and unilaterally, if necessary, modify the agency’s existing major site contracts to include a COVID-19 mandate, according to long-awaited guidance published Wednesday by DOE. The directive applies to “Management and Operating (M&O) contracts, major site/facility contracts and onsite support service contracts,” the agency wrote in the guidance.  […]

More than 60 members of the Washington state legislature have asked President Joe Biden to reconsider the Department of Justice’s challenge to an “overwhelmingly bipartisan state law to provide industrial insurance coverage to workers made sick” while doing cleanup work at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. In 2018 the legislature easily passed HB 1723 […]

Under the end state contracting approach, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has embraced indefinite duration, indefinite quantity agreements to a greater extent, the acting head of contracting, Angela Watmore, told an industry gathering in Eastern Tennessee Wednesday. “We took a hard look at where we were in the cleanup portfolio” for the […]

Personnel at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site recently tested a drainage system that will funnel byproducts of liquid waste cleanup to an outbuilding from the Low Activity Waste Facility, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said Tuesday. The system includes large tanks and miles of pipes inside the Low-Activity Waste Facility — […]

The Department of Energy’s advisory board for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio has postponed its meeting set for Thursday in Piketon, Ohio and will reschedule it at a later date, according to a statement Monday from the administrative contractor for the board. An email from EHI Consultants, on behalf of the advisory board cited two […]

A contractor for the Department of Energy has finished tearing down the last of 18 buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif., the agency said Monday. The last of the buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), Sodium Pump Test Facility, came down Friday, […]

The former head of the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the one-time number-two at the National Nuclear Security Administration will lead the latest incarnation of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the Department of Energy said Monday. Stanford University professor Arun Majumdar, once the head of the Joe Biden administration’s transition team for the Department […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General has a busy fiscal 2022 schedule of audits and inspections planned for projects affecting the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Last Thursday the DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its work plan for the fiscal year that began Friday. […]

Ty Blackford, who was CEO of the Jacobs subsidiary formerly in charge of cleanup at the Central Plateau of the Hanford Site in Washington state, is leading transition efforts for the Jacobs-led joint venture scheduled to take over remediation for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory by Jan. 1. That is according to a […]

A federal judge nixed a fishing expedition for a big tranche of data sought by people who live near the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site and who are trying to organize a class action lawsuit against eight current and former DOE contractors at the rural Ohio site. In a mid-September court filing,U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth […]