Department of Energy

The House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved a $16 million funding haircut for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Tennessee. If the spending level survives the congressional appropriations process, financing from the Energy Department’s Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund for the project would drop from about $195 million in […]

The Energy Department and the state of New York disagree on whether waste at the West Valley Demonstration Project should be considered defense-related, according to testimony Friday before the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) General Counsel Noah Shaw told the panel both high-level […]

An advisory body to the Department of Energy has declined to ask government agencies reconsider their approval of a planned on-site radioactive waste disposal cell Portsmouth Site in Ohio The Portsmouth Site Specific Advisory Board on May 10 voted 10-6 to urge DOE and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to reopen the formal 2015 record […]

A leaked report from a nominally independent office within the National Nuclear Security Administration offers a trove of new details about the plan the agency must sell to Congress in order to start producing nuclear-warhead cores in South Carolina. On May 10, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he would officially cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel […]

Las Vegas-based Longenecker & Associates said Tuesday it has hired nuclear industry veteran Mike Briggs to the newly created post of senior program manager for operational support. Briggs, who has worked on major projects within the Energy Department complex, will oversee L&A’s operational support business, which includes training, nuclear safety, and radiation protection. “As L&A […]

The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday rejected an amendment to its fiscal 2019 energy and water bill that would have siphoned away certain increased funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and Energy Department environmental cleanup programs. During the committee markup of the bill, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) proposed the amendment to help restore […]

Researchers have vitrified 2 gallons of radioactive waste removed from a Hanford Site storage tank in a first-of-a-kind demonstration of the processes that will be used at the Waste Treatment Plant being built at the Energy Department facility in Washington state. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers said it was the first time Hanford tank waste […]

The proposed House of Representatives’ fiscal 2019 spending plan for Hanford Site would provide more money than the Department of Energy requested but would not match current spending levels, according to information from the staff of Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.). On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee sent its marked-up energy bill to the full House. […]

The House Appropriations Committee is recommending $6.9 billion in fiscal 2019 for the nuclear cleanup program overseen by the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM). That would be $257 million less than the fiscal 2018 appropriation but $268 million more than the Trump administration’s request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. Ahead of […]

The Department of Energy aims later this month to resume liquid waste processing at the Savannah River Site, two months after the initial March projection. Meeting that schedule would cap off a 15- month pause of waste processing at the DOE facility near Aiken, S.C. The two-month delay was caused by a malfunctioning diesel generator […]

An official from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is expected to make the agency’s case Friday on Capitol Hill that the West Valley Demonstration Project is home to defense-related waste. It’s a distinction the state hopes will provide a quicker path to permanent disposal given the federal Land Withdrawal Act […]

The House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee on Friday will consider legislation reauthorizing appropriations for an Energy Department cleanup site in western New York state. Rep. Tom Reed’s (R-N.Y.) H.R. 2389 would reauthorize the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP), through 2026 and redefine its radioactive waste as specifically defense-related. The bill would revise Section […]

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), the tank operations contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state, finished emptying 16 waste storage tanks at the C Farm to regulatory standards in 2017. An article in the Monday edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing misstated the contractor that performed the work.

A new $288 million ventilation system, meant to allow the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico to conduct simultaneous underground salt mining and disposal of transuranic waste, has been approved by Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Anne White. “This will be a significant improvement for WIPP in support of its […]

Lynchburg, Va.-based BWX Technologies has named Joel Duling, currently leading its Nuclear Fuel Services subsidiary, to become president of its Nuclear Operations Groups as of June 22. Duling will succeed Joe Henry, who is retiring. Before joining Tennessee-based Nuclear Fuel Services five years ago as director of operations, Duling served at the Y-12 National Security […]

The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management plans to try a newly minted alternate method to analyze costs when it issues the final request for proposals (RFP) for the potential $4 billion Hanford Mission Essential Services Contract (HMESC) later this spring. Without going into detail, Contracting Officer Lori Sehlhorst announced the alternate method in a […]

The House’s version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act would require the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management office to notify Congress within two days if more workers are contaminated by radioactive material at the Hanford site in Washington state. The bill also would require the Environmental Management (EM) office to provide a report to […]

Centrus Energy reaped far more revenue in the first quarter of 2018 than it did during the same period of 2017, but still reported a net loss during for its latest earnings period. The Rockville, Md.-based uranium fuel provider reported $35.7 million in revenue for the first three months of 2018 compared to $7.2 million […]

The Department of Energy on June 4 will start taking comments on a draft evaluation on the strategy for closing the 16 tanks in the C Farm radioactive waste storage area. The announcement of the draft evaluation indicates DOE is interested in landfill closure of the single-shell tanks, likely by filling them with grout and […]

Jacobs Engineering hopes to sign more long-term government contracts following its December purchase of CH2M, Chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou said Tuesday. “We recently commenced work on the management and operations contract with the Department of Energy at the Nevada National Security Site, an example of one of these multiyear contracts,” Demetriou said during the […]

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), the tank management contractor for the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, has issued a request for information (RFI) for subcontractors interested in doing construction work inside the tank farm. WRPS expects to issue a formal request for proposals (RFP) during the final quarter of fiscal 2018, which ends […]

A new project baseline for the Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is expected in the next few months, according to the Department of Energy and contractor Parsons. The new baseline, which DOE requested in a March 7 notice of concern to Parsons SWPF Project Manager Frank Sheppard, should include a new projected date for […]

A year after the partial collapse of a tunnel used to store highly radioactively contaminated equipment at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Department of Energy is examining risks at the facility and across its cleanup complex. Work also continues to stabilize a second and larger tunnel at Hanford, which a structural analysis also […]

The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) plans to rule by June 1 on a proposal from the U.S. Energy Department to modify the method used to calculate the volume of transuranic waste being disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The Energy Department and site contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership filed the application Jan. […]

Top executives at AECOM and BWX Technologies this week made clear their companies still aim to come out on top in the extended contest for a multibillion-dollar contract at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. David Black, senior vice president and chief financial officer at Virginia-based BWXT, addressed the situation in […]

In a vote more than a decade in the making, the House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would smooth the way for the Department of Energy to build a permanent nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev. The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018 (H.R. 3053), shepherded through […]

An Energy Department contractor at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is seeking expressions of interest from subcontractors potentially interested in conducting concrete testing at Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) 7. Savannah River Remediation said in a May 8 post on a federal contracting website it is seeking responses by June 15. The AECOM-led […]

By John Stang Perma-Fix Environmental Services executives said Wednesday they see the potential for at least $5 million in annual revenue from a specialized radioactive waste vitrification system now being tested. In a conference call to discuss Perma-Fix’s latest quarterly earnings, President and CEO Mark Duff said there is enough contaminated sodium wastes at nuclear […]

The House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee on Monday approved a roughly $36-billion fiscal 2019 Department of Energy budget bill, which heads to the full committee for a markup Wednesday. The Energy Department would receive a 5-percent budget raise from 2018, if the bill the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee marked up […]

By John Stang Perma-Fix Environmental Services executives said Wednesday they see the potential for at least $5 million in annual revenue from a specialized radioactive waste vitrification system now being tested. In a conference call to discuss Perma-Fix’s latest quarterly earnings, President and CEO Mark Duff said there is enough contaminated sodium wastes at nuclear […]