Department of Energy

The House Appropriations Committee proposed a marginal increase for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, to $7.8 billion from the $7.6 in 2021, as part of a 2022 spending bill sent to the House floor Friday. The full committee advanced the energy and water spending package on a 33-to-24 vote party line vote, […]

Two protests filed with the Government Accountability Office over long-term Department of Energy contracts awards, each worth more than a billion dollars, were withdrawn this week. Bechtel-led Idaho Remediation on Tuesday withdrew its challenge of a $6.4-billion nuclear contract at the Idaho National Laboratory awarded in May to a Jacobs-led team, Idaho Environmental Coalition.  “The […]

Most of the cash greenlit for the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste activities should go towards a program to designate a federal interim storage facility, the House Appropriations Committee recommended this week in its budget for the 2022 fiscal year. That proposal survived Friday’s three-hour markup of an energy and water bill Friday, after which […]

A coalition of more than 30 citizen groups, called the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, wants President Joe Biden to nominate a Department of Energy assistant secretary for environmental management committed to cleanup and environmental justice, according to a Monday letter. Whoever gets picked to run the $7-billion-plus DOE Office of Environmental Management must have a […]

There has been no big retirement spike among federal employees at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office during the COVID-19 pandemic but officials who spoke at a virtual hearing this week fear that could change.  The assessment was offered by William “Ike” White, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, in response to a question […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shipped off a bottle of unidentified liquid found around a pothole along a contaminated stretch of a public road for analysis. On July 8, Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) discovered an intact 500-milliliter amber glass bottle containing […]

The environmental regulator in New Mexico should decide by this fall whether to allow the Department of Energy and its contractor to resume digging a new underground shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant this fall, a state official told the New Mexico Legislature’s Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee this week.  The final decision by […]

Since starting up in October, the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has processed 1 million gallons of radioactive tank waste, plant builder Parson wrote this week in press release. The 140,000-square-foot Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is the center of DOE plans to empty 36 […]

Since starting up in October, the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has processed 1 million gallons of radioactive tank waste, plant builder Parson wrote this week in press release. The 140,000-square-foot Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is the center of DOE plans to empty 36 […]

Senior officials from the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, and the states of Oregon and Washington, were scheduled to discuss radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Site in Washington today during a virtual meeting of a National Academies panel. The Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies was slated to hear […]

Despite a shortfall so far compared with the agency’s goals for 2021, disposing of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory continues to be a high priority for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a federal manager told the New Mexico Legislature’s Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee Wednesday. The federal agency had […]

The Department of Energy this week publicly released its long-delayed draft Record of Decision for a proposed new landfill to handle low-level radioactive waste from building demolition at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The 350-page draft on the Environmental Management Disposal Facility, dated June 22, now will undergo a 60-day review, by the Tennessee […]

There has been no big retirement spike among federal employees at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office during the COVID-19 pandemic but officials who spoke at a virtual hearing Tuesday fear that could change.  The assessment was offered by William “Ike” White, acting assistant secretary for environmental management, in response to a question from […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is holding a long-anticipated virtual public hearing today on ongoing safety issues for tritium production and other work at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Witnesses listed on the agenda include the acting assistant secretary for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, William “Ike” White […]

The Joe Biden administration “may be moving” to start its inquiry into a possible host state for a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, the chair of the House’s energy spending panel said Monday. “I believe we provided enough authority in the bill for [a consent-based siting inquiry] to move forward …  and […]

A coalition of more than 30 citizen groups, called the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, wants President Joe Biden to nominate a Department of Energy assistant secretary for environmental management committed to cleanup and environmental justice, according to a Monday letter. Whoever gets picked to run the $7-billion-plus DOE Office of Environmental Management must have a […]

It only took the House Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water subcommittee about 20 minutes Monday to bless an almost $7.8-billion fiscal 2022 budget proposal for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. Following a voice vote, the panel chaired by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) sent the proposal on to the full House Appropriations Committee […]

Nuclear weapons cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would get a little more funding than requested for fiscal year 2022, if a House subcommittee’s recommended budget becomes law. DOE Environmental Management (EM) would get just under $7.8 billion from the fiscal year 2022 spending bill the House Appropriations energy and water […]

At least one company that unsuccessfully bid against Tennessee-based Navarro Research and Engineering for the new Technical Assistance Contract at the Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico will be debriefed next week by the Department of Energy, a source said Thursday. The DOE announced July 1 that Navarro won a potential five-year, $100-million technical assistance […]

An internal Department of Energy watchdog recently gave a generally positive appraisal of evolving plans to protect workers and the public from potential hazards at the main treatment plant for the Hanford Site’s most radioactive liquid waste. It was part of the Office of Enterprise Assessments’ recent review of the Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis for […]

New Mexico is very unhappy about the possibility of a commercial interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel within its borders, a cadre of officials told the Secretary of Energy last week. The Land of Enchantment “has not and will not consent” to the proposed Holtec International interim storage site in Lea County, N.M., said […]

Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions, the Department of Energy contractor in charge of the 177 underground tanks of radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state, is looking for firms to do corrosion testing on double-shell tanks. Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) published a notice Wednesday on a federal procurement website seeking “expressions of […]

The Department of Energy now expects to restart an underground fan at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico by early fall as a means to bolster airflow until a new permanent ventilation system is operational in a few years.  Restarting the 700-C underground fan should add about 90,000 cubic feet per minute, bringing […]

Fowler General Construction Inc. of Richland, Washington, received three Hanford contracts totaling almost $19 million from tank farms prime Washington River Protection Solutions. One $5.3 million contract is to construct a 17,600-square-foot office building at Hanford’s 222-S laboratory. The laboratory provides analytical support for the tank farms.  The other two contracts cover $13.5 million are […]

The Secretary of Energy did not deny any written requests for information from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in the six months ended June 30, the chair of the independent federal board reported recently to Congress. “The Board has no denials of access to information to report in the past six months,” Defense Nuclear […]

The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has received more than 1,000 shipments of defense-related transuranic waste since the deep underground repository reopened in 2017 after the underground radiation leak of February 2014. More than three weeks ago, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) received its 1,000th shipment since April 2017, […]

Bidders vying for a potential five-year $100-million contract for moving containers of transuranic material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico should inform the Department of Energy about all their recent vehicle accidents, even those where a truck hits a deer. That is one of the takeaways from the questions and answers published […]

In a long-awaited legal settlement over six years of mislabeled, radioactive waste shipments to Nevada, the Department of Energy agreed to tighten waste-inspection standards at nuclear weapon sites and overhaul its solid waste permit with the state by early next year, Carson City’s top environmental official said this week. DOE will also have to revise […]

As part of President Joe Biden’s executive order to review policies issued by the Donald Trump White House, the Environmental Protection Agency is taking another look at its December 2020 approval of plans for a new landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the agency said recently. DOE’s draft record of […]

Shipments of transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant from National Nuclear Security Administration operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were set to resume this week after being on hold since an ignition scare in February, according to the Department of Energy. “After a careful review of the drum event” […]