Department of Energy

The largest corporate names in Energy Department environmental remediation were among more than 40 companies registered to attend briefings last week on the Central Plateau Cleanup Contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state. AECOM, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Fluor, Holtec, Jacobs, Navarro, North Wind, Orano, Perma-Fix, SNC-Lavalin, and Veolia were all registered with multiple representatives […]

A “take cover” alert was issued at the 200 East Area of the Hanford Site in Washington state at about 6 a.m. local time Friday after a worker saw steam rising from an unexpected area above PUREX Plant waste storage Tunnel 2, the Department of Energy confirmed. The agency and contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation were […]

The Department of Energy has extended the public comment period by 45 days for the new 2.2-million-cubic yard waste disposal facility at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. Comments are now being accepted through Dec. 10. The department has also postponed a public hearing on the landfill, which had been scheduled for Oct. 18, until […]

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it is considering sending the nation’s entire stock of Greater-Than-Class C and GTCC-like low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) for disposal at a specialized facility in West Texas. The proposal is addressed in a site-specific assessment of the potential environmental effects of shipping and holding the material at the Federal Waste […]

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it is considering sending the nation’s entire stock of Greater-Than-Class C and GTCC-like low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) for disposal at a specialized facility in West Texas. The proposal is addressed in a site-specific assessment of the potential environmental effects of shipping and holding the material at the Federal Waste […]

Two Democratic lawmakers from Nevada said Wednesday they directly called on President Donald Trump to follow through on his seeming pledge to reconsider federal efforts to send tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste to their state. In its first two budget proposals, the Trump administration has unsuccessfully sought congressional appropriations to resume licensing […]

The largest corporate names in Energy Department environmental remediation were among more than 40 companies registered to attend briefings last week on the Central Plateau Cleanup Contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state. AECOM, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Fluor, Holtec, Jacobs, Navarro, North Wind, Orano, Perma-Fix, SNC-Lavalin, and Veolia were all registered with multiple representatives […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to move ahead with completing a key document on disposal of Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) low-level radioactive waste rather than waiting on an upcoming milestone in another proceeding. The regulator had previously planned to issue a draft regulatory basis for a potential rulemaking on GTCC waste disposal six months after publishing […]

Huntington Ingalls Industries has hired two former officials with the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration to lead a performance assessment team for company affiliates doing work at nuclear sites around the country. Kim Lebak, who managed the NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory Field Office from 2014 through 2017, and Doug Dearolph, who […]

Department of Energy Office of Project Management Director Paul Bosco joins the Office of Environmental Management on Monday as its associate principal deputy assistant secretary for corporate affairs. “In this new role, Paul will lead all business services for EM including contract and project management, resource management, and internal and external communications,” according to a […]

Bechtel National expects in the next few months to fill up to 300 jobs at the Waste Treatment Plant it is building at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. The hiring comes as the contractor continues to shift from primarily construction to preparations for waste processing by a federal court-enforced deadline of […]

The Department of Energy said Tuesday it is considering sending the nation’s stock of Greater-Than-Class C (GTCC) and GTCC-like low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) for disposal at the Waste Control Specialists facility in West Texas. The proposal is addressed in a site-specific environmental assessment of shipping and holding the waste at the Federal Waste Facility on […]

The Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is expected to make four more shipments of transuranic waste  to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the near term, after having just revived shipments from LANL’s Area G. A weekly report dated Sept. 28 from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) indicated […]

The Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico last year shipped 5,058,687 kilograms of low-level radioactive waste off-site for disposal at federal and commercial properties. Operations at storied nuclear weapons laboratory generate low-level radioactive waste, transuranic waste, mixed low-level waste, and mixed transuranic waste, according to the 2017 Annual Site Environmental Report […]

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has concerns about the Department of Energy’s proposed change to nuclear safety management rules governing the agency and its contractors. The proposed rule, published in the Aug. 8 Federal Register, does not spell out certain bedrock nuclear safety principles such as “defense in depth” and the “hierarchy of controls,” […]

President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested his administration could rethink its efforts to license a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the Washington Post reported. “I think you should do things where people want them to happen, so I would be very inclined to be against it,” Trump told Reno radio station KRNV. “We […]

The Department of Energy has extended the public comment period by 45 days for the new 2.2-million-cubic yard waste disposal facility at the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. Comments are now being accepted through Dec. 10. The department has also postponed a public hearing on the landfill, which had been scheduled for this past Thursday, […]

An article in the Oct. 12 issue of Weapons Complex Monitor (“Life With Single Contractor at Hanford 222-S Lab, Could be Simpler, DOE Says”) should have said the former Wastren Advantage had its corporate name retired after it was folded into Veolia Nuclear Solutions – Federal Services.

The Southwest Experimental Fast-Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) in Arkansas moved closer to final remediation this week when contractor EnergySolutions removed the reactor from the containment building and placed it into a shipping container. Moving the roughly 90,000-pound reactor with a large crane took less than 30 minutes Monday, EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said by telephone Wednesday. […]

The contractor for legacy cleanup at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), has hired a subcontractor to remove telephone poles, old fences, and tons of concrete from Technical Area 21. The $1.5 million contract was awarded to a team of Montana-based Envirocon and Los Alamos-based […]

A combustive mixture of oxygen and substances within radioactive waste sludge being processed at the at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory is believed to be behind the April 11 rupture of four storage drums, according to site cleanup contractor Fluor Idaho. At a briefing Tuesday with officials from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, […]

The contractor in charge of decommissioning and decontamination of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, earned $24.3 million of a potential fee of almost $33 million for the 16-month period ended Sept. 30, 2017. The Energy Department’s recent release of the performance scorecard for Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth comes a couple weeks after the agency […]

The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., had through Oct. 3 received 254 shipments of defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste in 2018. At least one more has come in since then — a shipment from Area G of DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. The Energy Department and its LANL […]

The Energy Department’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., should improve certain practices to ensure safe operation of its underground ventilation, according to a recent DOE report. Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) should also communicate more with union labor at the waste disposal facility, particularly regarding to expectations for work […]

Two contractors in the Department of Energy nuclear complex have both named chief financial officers in recent days. In a Monday news release, Bechtel said it has promoted Catherine Hunt Ryan to the position. Hunt Ryan previously served as CFO at Bechtel’s Oil, Gas & Chemicals business for more than two years and has been […]

The Department of Energy is offering prospective bidders for the upcoming $6.5 billion Hanford Central Plateau Cleanup Contract the opportunity to discuss remediation goals with state and federal regulators for the Washington state facility. Following the Sept. 27 draft request for proposals, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management is asking potential Central Plateau bidders about their […]

The Energy Department has clarified what it means by the “Notice to Proceed” in its Hanford Site Mission Essential Services Contract, and answered other questions posed by bidders for the business, which could be worth $6 billion over 10 years. After releasing the final request for proposals on Sept. 20 on the contract, DOE posted […]

A federal judge has approved a request to push back the deadlines for extraction of radioactive tank waste set in the court-enforced consent decree governing cleanup of the Hanford Site. Extending the two milestones was a condition of a settlement agreement reached in September in a separate lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is suspending its search for sites in Nevada that could host hearings on the license application for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository until the agency knows whether it will again need such a facility. Commissioners unanimously concurred with a staff recommendation to defer further work on siting the hearing space, […]

Two assistant managers at one of the Department of Energy offices at the Hanford Site in Washington state have switched positions as part of a plan to build up its capabilities by providing opportunities for professional development. Glyn Trenchard, previously Office of River Protection (ORP) assistant manager for tank farms, has been named assistant manager […]