Archive

Department of Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, environmental cleanup program, and national laboratory system. Coverage here tracks DOE budget requests, contract awards, policy decisions, regulatory action, and leadership changes across the agency’s defense and civilian nuclear missions.

  • New DOE Web Page Focuses on End States Contracting

    The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management has set up a website devoted to providing information on the end states contracting model. End states, as defined in December special notice from the DOE cleanup office, is a single-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracting approach with the flexibility to cover both cost-reimbursement and firm-fixed-price task orders within the […]

  • Idaho Penalties Against Energy Department Over IWTU Top $5.3M

    The state of Idaho has fined the Energy Department more than $5.3 million for failure to begin operating the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory. The $5.3 million figure represents the total penalties as of Jan. 19, Natalie Creed, hazardous waste unit manager at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), […]

  • AECOM Exec Anticipates Savannah River Contract Decision ‘Any Day Now’

    The waiting game for re-award of a multibillion-dollar contract for liquid waste management at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina might be over soon, an AECOM executive said Tuesday. “We expect the Savannah River Site to be awarded any day now,” Chief Operating Officer Randall Wotring said during the company’s quarterly […]

  • Jacobs Engineering Revenue Rises in Latest Quarter

    Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering brought in $3.1 billion in revenue during the quarter ended Dec. 31, 73 percent higher than the $1.8 billion reported for the same period one year earlier Jacobs, which has a wide footprint in the Energy Department nuclear cleanup complex through subsidiary CH2M, reported earnings today for the first quarter of its […]

  • DOE Looks to Keep Portsmouth-Paducah Tech Support Vendors in Place Through December

    Two Tennessee-based firms, RSI Entech and Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve), appear set to keep their technical support business for the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) through the end of the year. The Energy Department said in a Jan. 11 notice of intent it expects to negotiate an agreement to keep RSI on from […]

  • AECOM Revenue Rises Across Company and Within DOE Business

    AECOM on Tuesday reported $5 billion in revenue Tuesday for the quarter ended Dec, 31, about 3 percent more than the $4.9 billion reported in the same period one year earlier. Net income attributable to AECOM came in at $52 million, down 54 percent from $111 million reported in the same quarter a year ago.  […]

  • North Wind Solutions Stays on the Job at Oak Ridge TRU Waste Center

    The Energy Department has picked up a two-year option to keep North Wind Solutions in charge of the Transuranic Waste Processing Center at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee through October 2020. An Energy Department spokesperson confirmed Monday the department in October exercised its option to the original three-year base period. The entire five-year agreement […]

  • Hanford Richland Operations Office Manager to Retire

    Doug Shoop, manager of the Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office at the Hanford Site in Washington state, will retire from federal employment on Feb. 16. Shoop has led one of the two DOE offices overseeing the massive cleanup job at Hanford since July 2016. Brian Vance remains manager of the Office of River Protection. […]

  • AECOM, Jacobs to Report Quarterly Earnings This Week

    Two mainstays of Energy Department contracting, Los Angeles-based AECOM and Dallas-based Jacobs, will post quarterly earnings reports this week. AECOM will post its earnings before the stock market opens Tuesday, followed by a conference call with Wall Street analysts at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. Jacobs will report earnings prior to the market opening Wednesday, followed […]

  • Industry Day for Tank Tour Draws Big Crowd, Big Names

    More than 45 people registered for the Jan. 24 site tour and industry briefing on the Tank Closure Contract at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, including some big contractors in the weapons complex. Companies represented at the gathering include: AECOM; AVANTech; Bechtel; Booz Allen Hamilton; BWX Technologies; Columbia Energy and Environmental […]

  • EM Dramatically Raises Estimates for Hanford Cleanup Costs

    The projected cost to clean up the Hanford Site in Washington state dramatically increased over the last three years, according to a Department of Energy report published Friday. The 2019 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost report put the remaining cost of Hanford cleanup at some $323 billion, in a best case scenario. In the […]

  • Updated Hanford Vit Plant Plan Does Not Demand Environmental Impact Supplement, DOE Says

    The Department of Energy has determined that its current operating plans for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site do not require a supplement to a comprehensive 2012 supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) on radioactive tank waste at the Washington state cleanup complex. The agency concluded in a new analysis that altered plans for […]

  • Livermore, Sandia Labs to Make First Shipments to WIPP Since Outage

    The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., is expected to receive 330 shipments of transuranic waste over the next 12 months, with some coming from sites that have not shipped material in years. The Energy Department and its WIPP contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership, held a breakfast presentation Monday for New Mexico lawmakers, […]

  • Savannah River to Triple Sludge Waste Treatment After SWPF Startup

    The Savannah River Site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) should produce 300 canisters of treated sludge waste per year once the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) comes online later in 2019. That would be significantly higher than the 136 canisters produced in fiscal 2016, the 52 in fiscal 2017, and 18 in the last fiscal […]

  • Venture Awarded $4.8M Task Order for Test Bed Processing of Hanford Waste

    The Energy Department has awarded a 10-month, $4.8 million task order to Tennessee-based Aerostar Perma-Fix TRU Services for the second phase of the Test Bed Initiative (TBI) on disposal of radioactive waste from the Hanford Site in Washington state. The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the cost-plus-fixed-fee task order under an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract […]

  • Tearing Down West Valley Main Process Building Delayed Until Next Cleanup Contract

    While deactivation of the Main Plant Process Building at the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York is nearly finished, demolition will be done under a successor to the current site cleanup contract held by CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley (CHBWV). The demolition was previously expected to start last year under the existing CHBWV contract. […]

  • Savannah River Contractors Each Earn More Than 90 Percent of Fee

    The incumbent management and operations contractor and the vendor in charge of liquid waste at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina both received at least 90 percent of their potential fee in new performance evaluations. Fluor-led site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation both received “excellent” overall […]

  • H Canyon Roofing Repairs at Savannah River to Cost $1M

    Roofing repairs at the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) H Canyon processing facility will begin this summer after rainwater dripped through a crack in the roof to the ground floor of the facility. The water became contaminated as it passed through the nuclear materials processing area on its way to the first level of the canyon, Monte […]

  • Arkansas Experimental Reactor Vessel Arrives in Nevada for Disposal

    The last big segment of the Southwest Experimental Fast-Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) has been uprooted from its Arkansas home and shipped to the Nevada Nuclear Security Site for disposal. The reactor vessel and remaining components from the 20-megawatt, sodium-cooled test reactor arrived at the NNSS on Dec. 13, according to a January report to the Department […]

  • Oak Ridge Waste Processing Contractor Claims 97 Percent of Fee

    The contractor that manages the Transuranic Waste Processing Center at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee earned 97 percent of its potential award fee for a 12-month period ending in late October 2018. The Energy Department released the fee scorecard for North Wind Solutions this week. The company took home $382,749 of a […]

  • California Criticizes DOE Environmental Study on Santa Susana

    The Department of Energy’s final environmental study for its share of cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is inadequate and does not follow an agreement reached with California in 2010, state officials said this week. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) also asked DOE to accept comments on the final environmental impact […]

  • ECA Urges Senate to Open its Purse for Waste Repository

    The nongovernmental organization representing communities near Department of Energy facilities is urging Senate leaders to commit to ending the federal government’s dithering over building a disposal facility for the nation’s nuclear waste. The United States holds roughly 100,000 metric tons of waste that by law must go into a permanent repository, which Congress in 1987 […]

  • Tab for Environmental Liability Outpacing Nuclear Cleanup Spending, GAO Says

    Cleaning up the contamination left by Cold War nuclear weapons operations could cost the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) another $377 billion, or $109 billion more than last year’s estimate, the Government Accountability Office said in a report Tuesday. Agency cleanup officials interviewed by GAO are aware of the increase, but have not […]

  • Hanford Cleanup Contractor Earns 80 Percent of Potential FY18 Fee

    Hanford Site cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. received just 80 percent of its available fee for fiscal 2018, after the Department of Energy called it out for the second year in a row over its performance at the Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition. CH2M is responsible for environmental remediation in Hanford’s Central Plateau, plus […]

  • ECA Urges Senate to Fund Rad Waste Repository

    The nongovernmental organization representing communities near Department of Energy facilities is urging Senate leaders to commit to ending the federal government’s dithering over building a disposal facility for the nation’s nuclear waste. The United States holds roughly 100,000 metric tons of waste that by law must go into a permanent repository, which Congress in 1987 […]

  • California Knocks DOE Environmental Study on Santa Susana

    The Department of Energy’s final environmental study for its share of cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is inadequate and does not follow an agreement reached with California in 2010, state officials said this week. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) also asked DOE to accept comments on the final environmental impact […]

  • Savannah River Site Begins New Salt Waste Treatment Method

    The Department of Energy has initiated a major addition to the liquid waste mission at the Department of Savannah River Site in South Carolina, starting with a nine-month trial run. Officials at the 310-square-mile facility near Aiken, S.C., said the tank closure cesium removal (TCCR) mission should process hundreds of thousands of gallons of salt […]

  • Livermore, Sandia Labs Expected to Ship Waste to WIPP Within 12 Months

    The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., expects to receive 330 shipments of transuranic waste over the next 12 months, with some coming from sites that have not shipped material in years. The Energy Department and its WIPP contractor, Nuclear Waste Partnership, held a legislative breakfast presentation Monday for New Mexico lawmakers, […]

  • Energy Dept. Nuclear Cleanup Liability Rises by $109B, GAO Says

    Cleaning up the contamination left by Cold War nuclear weapons work from could cost the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management another $377 billion, or $109 billion more than last year’s estimate, the Government Accountability Office said in a report issued Tuesday. The DOE office has spent about $170 billion since its creation in 1989, […]

  • ECA Urges Senate to Fund Nuke Waste Repository

    The nongovernmental organization representing communities near Department of Energy facilities around the nation is urging Senate leaders to commit to ending the federal government’s dithering over building a disposal facility for the nation’s nuclear waste. The United States holds roughly 100,000 metric tons of waste that by law must go into a permanent repository, which […]