Department of Energy

The White House said late Thursday it would not seek any funding in its upcoming budget proposal for licensing a nuclear waste disposal facility under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The brief emailed statement from an administration official – “The President’s 2021 budget will not have funding for the licensing of Yucca Mountain in it” – came […]

The Energy Department and contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation have finished taking down the main processing facility at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. With the building’s demolition, full removal of the Plutonium Finishing Plant should be finished this summer by the Jacobs subsidiary. Remaining work involves packaging and disposal of the rubble from the Plutonium […]

Long-anticipated talks between the Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology on cleanup issues at the Hanford Site should finally begin by early March. The two sides have agreed on the scope of the talks, Ecology Nuclear Waste Program Manager Alex Smith said Wednesday during a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board. […]

There has been no apparent movement by the Trump administration over the last year to fill vacant and expired terms on the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB). The only change to the board in that time was the departure last May of another member, Linda Nozick, a civil and environmental engineering professor at […]

After the Energy Department picked a rival contractor for the major cleanup contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state, Jacobs is anxiously awaiting a decision on a 10-year award for management of the facility’s radioactive tank waste. Jacobs subsidiary CH2M is the incumbent on the Hanford Central Plateau remediation project, but a Jacobs-led team […]

Vendors appear to have recently updated protests filed with the Government Accountability Office over two new contract awards, together potentially worth $14 billion, for work at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Both additions were filed since Jan. 27 by corporate teams that days earlier filed protests against DOE awards for Hanford Site […]

The Department of Energy and the state of Idaho on Tuesday sealed an agreement on management of spent nuclear fuel generated by the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory. The nearly 53-year-old reactor is used for government and commercial research and testing on nuclear fuels and materials, including on fuel that powers naval […]

Having successfully divested its government-contracting business, AECOM continues to look for a successor to Chairman and CEO Michael Burke. Burke, 56, announced in November that he plans to retire pending selection of a replacement. Speaking to financial analysts Monday during AECOM’s quarterly earnings call, he said a search committee is making good progress on finding […]

While Amentum is a new company, it is far from a new face doing business for government nuclear and environmental agencies, a senior executive said Tuesday. The former AECOM Management Services branch officially became Amentum on Friday with the closure of the $2.4 billion sale to affiliates of New York-based investment firms Lindsay Goldberg and […]

The Energy Department on Tuesday issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a new small business set-aside contract to provide support services at the Paducah Site in Kentucky. Incumbent Swift & Staley’s five-year, $185 million contract expires in September. The DOE Office of Environmental Management had said last month it could soon issue a solicitation […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Under pressure from the state of Texas, the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office has agreed to relocate drums containing potentially combustible radioactive transuranic waste stored since 2014 at the privately operated Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County. “We are going to work to disposition the legacy TRU waste from Los Alamos […]

Engineering and construction giant AECOM said Monday it has completed the $2.4 billion sale of its Management Service business to a joint venture of two New York investment firms. Sale of the subsidiary to American Securities LLC and Lindsay Goldberg LLC closed on Friday, according to an AECOM press release. The new company, which will […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A hyper-partisan political climate, as reflected by the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump and the start of presidential primaries this month, reduces the chances of timely passage of appropriations bills to fund the government for fiscal 2021, issue watchers said last week. The Energy Department and other federal agencies are likely […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is establishing a new office to manage “all policy within the Department,” and appointing a new personal adviser for nuclear security, according to an all-hands memo dated Tuesday. To do this, Brouillette will rebrand the current Office of Policy (OP) as the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy (OSSP), which […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

Interactions between processed high-level radioactive waste and stainless-steel containers could undermine long-term safe geologic disposal of the material, researchers at Ohio State University said in a study published this week. “The corrosion that is accelerated by the interface interaction between dissimilar materials could profoundly impact the service life of the nuclear waste packages, which, therefore, […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration has decided to use a cleanup facility in Ohio to help produce high-purity depleted uranium metal for nuclear weapons programs. The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency will do that by installing a fourth process line at the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion facility at the Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, […]

New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation this month called on the Department of Energy to suspend a controversial order that the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) says has curtailed its access to nuclear-weapon sites. The Energy Department should lift the almost 2-year-old Order 140.1 to comply with recent changes to federal law that require […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The Trump administration does not plan to request any funding in fiscal 2021 for licensing the planned nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., issue experts said at an industry conference here Tuesday. That would reverse the White House’s efforts in its last three budget proposals to persuade Congress to appropriate money […]

Interactions between processed high-level radioactive waste and stainless-steel containers could undermine long-term safe geologic disposal of the material, researchers at Ohio State University said in a study published this week. “The corrosion that is accelerated by the interface interaction between dissimilar materials could profoundly impact the service life of the nuclear waste packages, which, therefore, […]

A new inspector general’s report bashed the human resources department at the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as ineffective, inefficient, and incapable of supporting the agency’s oversight of defense-nuclear sites. The board’s “human resources program is currently not designed and implemented to effectively support the execution of its mission,” reads a report issued this […]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy has begun a limited program to explore opportunities for recycling used nuclear fuel, a senior official said Tuesday. “We are starting a small effort to look at some of these options, but it’s early in development and there’s no clear outcome on where it’s going […]

The Department of Energy should expand its use of underground research laboratories (URLs) for research on geologic disposal of nuclear waste, including establishing facilities in the United States, a federal panel of experts said in a report Tuesday. That would include establishing one or more underground research laboratories, potentially using existing underground facilities, according to […]

Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B), the vendor in charge of legacy environmental remediation operations at the U.S. Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico, won 84% of its potential fee for work done during fiscal 2019. Altogether, N3B took home more than $8.6 million of a potential amount exceeding $10.2 million, […]

Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette is establishing a new office to manage “all policy within the Department,” and appointing a new personal adviser for nuclear security, according to an all-hands memo dated Tuesday. To do this, Brouillette will rebrand the current Office of Policy (OP) as the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy (OSSP), which […]

Wide-ranging talks between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology on radioactive waste issues at the Hanford Site have apparently not progressed beyond the starting line. “The parties are still working through some preliminary arrangements,” Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury said in a Jan. 23 email. The agencies confirmed in October […]

Demolition of a Cold War-era legacy facility in December still leaves more than 1,100 facilities and buildings to tear down at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Specifically, 1,127 facilities have been identified for eventual demolition, SRS spokesman Monte Volk said via email. Those facilities encompass offices, power production plants, and […]

An article in the Jan. 24 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor should have stated the Savannah River National Laboratory has an annual budget of roughly $350 million.

The Government Accountability Office should by the end of April rule on challenges to $14 billion worth of Energy Department contract awards at the Hanford Site in Washington state. With the deadline now passed for additional challenges, the GAO has single protests on its docket for each award: the 10-year, $10-billion Hanford Central Plateau cleanup […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board wants to forge a closer working relationship with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. In a Jan. 10 letter to DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board Chairwoman Jean Bahr urged “a framework for more regular interaction” between the two […]