Department of Energy

The Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday reported out two nominations to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) via voice vote. The nominations of serving DNFSB member Joyce Connery and new nominee Thomas Summers now advance to the full Senate, which had not scheduled a floor vote at deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor. […]

The next issue of Weapons Complex Monitor will be published on Thursday, July 2, in observance of the Independence Day holiday.

Congressman Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said Wednesday he is considering several legislative measures aimed at fixing the federal government’s decades-long failure to find a permanent disposal space for tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste. One of those steps could involve taking the mission away from the Department of Energy in favor of a Nuclear […]

By John Stang A draft federal environmental impact statement (EIS) for a proposed used nuclear fuel storage site in southeastern New Mexico focuses on a 40-year licensing period, and does not sufficiently consider that the radioactive material might remain there long past that point, opponents of the project argued Tuesday. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 19 locked in its fee collection levels for the current federal fiscal year. The agency collects 90% of its annual budget through annual and service fees, with the rest appropriated by Congress. Lawmakers set the NRC’s budget at $855.6 million for fiscal 2021, which ends on Sept. 30, according […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday reported out two nominations to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) via voice vote. The nominations of serving DNFSB member Joyce Connery and new nominee Thomas Summers now advance to the full Senate. No date has been set for a floor vote. Connery joined the board in […]

Centerra Group, the incumbent provider of paramilitary security at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, has withdrawn a Government Accountability Office (GAO) protest over procurement of a follow-on contract. Centerra filed the protest May 8, but then withdrew it on June 9, according to a notice posted on the GAO website. The […]

Another worker at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state tested posted for COVID-19 this week, bringing the total number of cases to 17 at the former plutonium production complex. The individual works at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel, according to the Energy Department website that provides updates on COVID-19. Access […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has formally accepted for review an Energy Department proposal to dispose of vitrified low-activity waste inside the fence at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Energy Department on April 23 filed its draft Waste Incidental to Reprocessing (WIR) evaluation with the NRC, which in this case is serving as […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act would allow $100 million more in the primary funding tranche for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management than requested by the Donald Trump administration. The legislation would authorize $5.1 billion for defense environmental cleanup for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 […]

The Energy Department is lagging behind schedule for deactivation and demolition of the C-400 complex at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, the DOE Inspector General’s Office said in an audit report released Tuesday. The 134,000-square-foot C-400 building was chiefly employed to clean equipment used in uranium enrichment at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. A […]

Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Friday it has secured a $7 million contract for cleanup operations at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The award covers “remediation, demolition and waste management services,” according to a press release from the Atlanta-based waste management company. The release did not offer additional details. Perma-Fix referred questions seeking specifics […]

The Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina has confirmed six more cases of COVID-19 since Thursday, while the Hanford Site in Washington state on Sunday reported another case among its workforce. The Savannah River Site operations office website now lists a total of 42 cases of COVID-19 among roughly 11,000 personnel. Twenty-eight of […]

Radioactive contamination is more widespread than first thought along a road outside the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). The area is part of a tract of land, which includes the site of a planned housing development, transferred from LANL to Los Alamos County […]

The Energy Department contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., earned 83%, or $14.3 million, of a potential $17.3 million fee for its work during fiscal 2019. The DOE fee scorecard for the period from Oct. 1, 2018, through Sept. 30, 2019, was recently posted online for Nuclear Waste Partnership, a joint […]

The House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee on Monday approved the nuclear-weapons parts of the chamber’s fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The brief markup sets the stage for the full committee to consider the legislation on July 1. It took only about 15 minutes, without debate or amendments, for the panel to advance […]

The Energy Department expects by mid-August to issue a request for proposals (RFP) for treatment of low-level and mixed-level radioactive wastes, according to procurement documents published Thursday. The DOE Office of Environmental Management said an RFP should be issued within 15 to 60 days of the June 18 notice. The agency plans to issue one […]

There were seven confirmed new cases of COVID-19 across the U.S. civilian nuclear weapons complex last week, a spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Friday. That makes for a total of 119 cases since confirmation in January of the first U.S. case of the viral disease, which is caused by the novel […]

The Energy Department said Friday that a third worker at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., has tested positive for COVID-19. The employee of WIPP management and operations contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership “became ill earlier this week and was tested by WIPP Health Services on Wednesday,” the Energy Department announced on its social […]

A House Armed Services Committee panel is worried the top executive post at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is becoming too much of a revolving door. The strategic forces subcommittee on Sunday released its 56-page mark for the House’s 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The document calls for the Government Accountability Office […]

Oak Ridge-Tenn.-based Isotek Systems has inked a $254 million contract modification with the Energy Department to continue disposing of uranium-233 (U-233) through 2024 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Isotek has overseen the inventory of U-233 since October 2003, removing the material from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Building 3019. This contract modification authorizes $254 […]

The Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state has confirmed two more cases of COVID-19 among its workforce since last Friday, which would bring its total to 15. In addition, DOE’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina has confirmed its 36th case as of Thursday. Twenty-three of those workers have recovered and returned to […]

Reinhard Knerr, a director at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office (PPPO), will in mid-July become the new permanent manager for the agency’s Carlsbad Field Office in New Mexico. The appointment is part of a flurry of new assignments unveiled this week by the DOE Office of Environmental Management. Knerr is currently federal project director […]

Department of Energy contractor Strategic Management Solutions Inc. (SMSI) has hired industry veteran Matthew Nuckols for the newly created position of executive vice president. A civil engineer, Nuckols has 25 years of project and program management experience at sites within the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management and semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) complexes, […]

Tearing down 10 contaminated Department of Energy buildings must precede further cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, California state officials said during an online meeting June 11. Representatives of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) expect final state approval next month of […]

Fluor is paying over $1.1 million in separation agreements to two recently departed executives, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Executive Vice President for Systems and Supply Chain Ray Barnard is being paid a lump sump of $620,000, and Executive Vice President, Energy and Chemicals—Business Development and Strategy Jose Bustamante is […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) denied two protests filed over RSI EnTech’s roughly $191 million contract to provide support services for the Energy Department’s Office of Legacy Management, which the challengers called unrealistically cheap. The Energy Department previously said the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract could be worth up to $1 billion over five years, depending […]

The Energy Department was chided for not providing much hard data during a virtual public meeting Wednesday on fiscal 2022 budget priorities for ongoing cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The meeting was organized by the three signatories to the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement that governs environmental remediation at the former plutonium production complex: […]

Incumbent Navarro Research and Engineering has won a new contract potentially worth $350 million to continue providing environmental services at the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site. The current contract for Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Navarro, valued at almost $85 million, began in March 2015 and is set to expire July 31. The new indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico received only 67 shipments of transuranic waste during the first five months of the year, compared to 125 during the same period in 2019. The underground disposal site for defense-related TRU received 20 shipments in May. Thirteen came from the Idaho National Laboratory and seven […]