Department of Energy

The House Appropriations Committee’s initial fiscal 2020 funding bill for energy and water development operations would sustain funding for the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office at nearly $7.2 billion. While even with current funding, that would be $706 million more than the Trump administration proposed in March for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The White […]

The House Appropriations Committee’s draft fiscal 2020 energy and water bill provides no money to resume federal licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Instead, the legislation would provide an unspecified appropriation for initial interim storage operations for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, according to a press release from […]

A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers on Tuesday introduced legislation intended to help the federal government finally build a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is a slightly updated version of legislation introduced in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That bill made it out of the […]

The Energy Department, possibly inching toward a draft solicitation, has posted a slew of documents related to the contract for environmental remediation at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. More than 50 documents were posted Friday to the website for DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center. They encompass the labor pact in place for current […]

A middle school near the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, will be closed until summer break due to concerns over levels of radioactive contaminants on the property. A local schools official said enriched uranium was identifeid inside Zahn’s Corner Middle School and neptutnium-237 was detected by a DOE air monitor adjacent to […]

The Department of Energy is still waiting on action from Congress that would be necessary to carry out its legal requirement to dispose of the nation’s Greater-Than-Class C (GTCC) low-level radioactive waste, a senior official said last week. The agency has largely been in a holding pattern since issuing a November 2017 report to Congress […]

WASHINGTON — Plans for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors raise questions about the ultimate disposition of that radioactive material once a facility’s federal license expires, former Nuclear Regulatory Chairman Gregory Jaczko said Monday. Speaking at a Capitol Hill event on nuclear decommissioning, Jaczko posited a scenario in which the […]

On April 30, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) hit the one-year mark as the cleanup vendor for legacy waste at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. N3B is tasked with environmental remediation at the 34-square-mile federal property, along with preparing radioactive waste for disposal off-site. It sent the first […]

The federal government is not likely ever to secure local consent for disposal of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors, but that approach could nonetheless be tested in a plan for temporary storage of the radioactive material, according to a former head of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). “Consent-based siting […]

The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) should complete its transuranic waste processing mission this summer, although some work remains beyond fiscal 2019. Roughly 6,500 cubic meters of material, or about 10% of the original total, still requires certification and transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in […]

A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has scheduled a data-gathering meeting for May 16 near the Hanford Site in Washington state. This will be the panel’s sixth meeting the committee to study supplemental treatment of low-activity radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The Waste Treatment Plant being […]

The Volpentest Hazardous Materials and Emergency Response (HAMMER) Federal Training Center at the Hanford Site in Washington state has reached 2 million work hours without a lost workday injury, contractor Mission Support Alliance and the Department of Energy announced Friday. The safety milestone took about eight years to achieve. It was reached as the training […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management has delayed completion of the draft record of decision on a proposed new landfill facility for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee until August. Previously, the draft ROD was expected May 7. State and federal regulators approved a three-month extension for submitting thedocument for the proposed Environmental Management […]

By John Stang The proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada could conceivably end up receiving 150,000 metric tons of radioactive waste by the second half of this century, according to a Nevada state government analysis of a proposed U.S. Senate bill intended to advance the disposal project. The April 29 memo from […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill that contains the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission budgets will include about 4% more funding than the enacted 2019 bill did, according to spending limits published Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The total allocation for the 2020 Energy and Water Development […]

The Department of Energy and two companies have agreed to carry out “remedial design” for the cleanup approach selected by the Environmental Protection Agency for the radioactively contaminated area of the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. The Energy Department, Bridgeton Landfill LLC, and Cotter Corp. are the potentially responsible parties for the EPA Superfund […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Wednesday voiced support for his agency’s potential reinterpretation of the definition of high-level radioactive waste. The Department of Energy proposed the reinterpretation in October and is now reviewing public comments submitted through Jan. 9 on the matter. Ultimately, DOE could determine that the definition should emphasize the radiological threat waste […]

The federal government must be allowed to resume the long-delayed licensing for a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Thursday. In testimony on Capitol Hill, Perry suggested he is not committed solely to one disposal location, but rather to finally ending a decades-long impasse on finding a permanent […]

By John Stang Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Thursday that revenue in the first quarter of 2019 dropped by $1 million from the prior year, as the company’s services branch hit a lull in business. The Atlanta-based nuclear services provider said revenue fell from $12.7 million in first-quarter 2018 to $11.7 million in its latest earnings […]

An 18-month extension for a major Department of Energy contract gave a boost to AECOM’s earnings for the second quarter and first half of its 2019 fiscal year. Executives said this week they expect more wins in the years ahead. The Los Angeles-based infrastructure multinational on Wednesday reported just over $5 billion in revenue for […]

Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering is getting new leadership in the business division that manages its operations for the Department of Energy. Terry Hagen, Jacobs’ chief operating officer and president for the Aerospace, Technology, and Nuclear group, will retire from leadership effective June 3. He will be succeeded by Dawne Hickton, a former CEO and vice chair […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has set a public hearing for May 22 in Washington, D.C., to consider the Department of Energy’s efforts to prevent future accidents during nuclear waste operations. The half-day meeting is broken into two sessions, according to the recently released agenda. In the first, the DNFSB will focus on improved […]

Communities around Energy Department nuclear cleanup sites deserve a voice in the agency’s much-discussed end-state contracting model, according to the Energy Communities Alliance. Local input is important “particularly in regard to DOE’s plans to implement any updated or revised approaches to waste management and disposal,” the ECA said in a recent report on national radioactive waste […]

The House of Representatives’ fiscal 2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill that contains the budget for the Department of Energy will include about 4% more funding than the enacted 2019 bill, according to spending limits published Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The total allocation for the 2020 energy and water development appropriations bill, which […]

By John Stang Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Thursday that revenue in the first quarter of 2019 dropped by $1 million from the prior year, as the company’s services branch hit a lull in business. The Atlanta-based nuclear services provider said revenue fell from $12.7 million in first-quarter 2018 to $11.7 million in its latest earnings […]

The U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday it has contracted five small businesses to provide $24.9 million worth of demolition and other cleanup services for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The selected companies are: Aerostar SES, of Oak Ridge; ARS Aleut Remediation, of Port Allen, La.; CTI and Associates, of Knoxville, Tenn.; GEM Technologies, […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday voiced support for his agency’s potential reinterpretation of the definition of high-level radioactive waste. The Department of Energy proposed the reinterpretation in October and is now reviewing public comments submitted through Jan. 9 on the matter. Ultimately, DOE could determine the definition should emphasize the radiological threat waste poses […]

Officials from the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the New Mexico Environment Department are set to meet in July to discuss legacy nuclear-waste-cleanup priorities for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2020, the chair of an agency-funded advisory group said Wednesday. “The [New Mexico] Environmental Department and Los Alamos [Environmental Management] begin their […]

Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Thursday that revenue in the first quarter of 2019 dropped by $1 million from the prior year, as the company’s services branch hit a lull in business. The Atlanta-based nuclear services provider said revenue fell from $12.7 million in first-quarter 2018 to $11.7 million in its latest earnings period. That generated […]

The Department of Energy and two companies have agreed to carry out “remedial design” for the cleanup approach selected by the Environmental Protection Agency for the radioactively contaminated area of the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. The Energy Department, Bridgeton Landfill LLC, and Cotter Corp. are the potentially responsible parties for the EPA Superfund […]