Los Alamos National Laboratory

A regional group to promote communities around the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has reportedly decided to close up shop. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Monday the Regional Coalition  of LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory] Communities voted during its Friday online meeting to start wrapping up operations. The move […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory has hired enough criticality safety personnel to support planned manufacturing of nuclear-weapon cores at the New Mexico laboratory, but staff churn among these crucial workers is more common than the lab believes, a new DOE review said. Lab management and operations contractor Triad National Security “has adequately managed the training and […]

The legacy cleanup contractor for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico now has a public website about its efforts to remediate contamination along a public road in Los Alamos County. Radioactive contamination was discovered in February 2020 within a 28-acre parcel of land along DP Road that DOE had already […]

Effective Tuesday, May 25 fully-vaccinated workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state will no longer need to wear a face covering, the site’s manager Brian Vance said in an online memo to employees Wednesday. The directive is slated to go into effect about a week after all-hands letter from Vance to […]

Kirk Lachman, a longtime hand around the Department of Energy’s weapons complex and current field office manager of the agency’s Office of Environmental Management at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is retiring June 27. Lachman will be retiring from DOE after 30 years of federal service, a spokesperson for the agency said […]

A three-day New Mexico Environment Department hearing on the need for a new underground shaft for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant kicked off this week with a lawyer for DOE saying the case is not about a life extension for the transuranic waste disposal site. The hearing is about efforts to “restore […]

Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites were tracking 76 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday, down 30 from last week and the lowest weekly case count since the fall. The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) case numbers were last this low during early October. The figures provided via email from an EM […]

Waste Control Specialists in West Texas could remain home for up to 74 containers of radioactive waste, which Texas authorities want to evict, for three more years, under an extension announced Thursday by the Department of Energy. The DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Los Alamos field office issued a task order to keep Waste Control […]

An April 16 staff report by a federal watchdog questions if the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration have fully learned lessons stemming from a drum breach and radiation release that shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in February 2014. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) […]

The president of News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) Glenn Morgan is leaving his post with the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and taking a job with Huntington Ingalls Industries. “I wanted to let you know that I have been called upon to fill a corporate position for […]

The president of News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) Glenn Morgan is leaving his post with the legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and taking a job with Huntington Ingalls Industries. “I wanted to let you know that I have been called upon to fill a corporate position for […]

An April 16 staff report by a federal watchdog questions if the Department of Energy and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration have fully learned lessons stemming from a drum breach and radiation release that shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico in February 2014. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Kairos Power are cooperating to develop a low-power test reactor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. The government-owned electric utility, which holds an early site permit for a small modular reactor from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will provide Kairos Power with engineering, operating and licensing […]

The Department of Energy and its legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory said Tuesday an interim groundwater pump-and-treat system to contain a hexavalent chromium plume is now fully operational. Three extraction wells and two injection wells that came online this month are part of what DOE dubbed an “interim measure” to control […]

A program-independent review found the cost-floor for building the National Nuclear Security Administration’s planned, multibillion-dollar pit factory at the Los Alamos National Laboratory will be slightly higher than the official estimate, though the ceiling might be a little lower. The Los Alamos Plutonium Pit Production Project (LAP4) and supporting infrastructure should cost between $2.93 billion […]

The Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration this week appointed two new deputy managers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory field office in New Mexico. Jason Saenz will be the new deputy manager for technical operations and Paula “Erika” Wisdom will be the deputy manager for business, security and missions as a new […]

A week after a coalition of citizen groups threatened to sue without more environmental vetting, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration approved the first critical decision toward ramping up pit production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Wednesday said it has approved Critical Decision […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration failed to follow federal best practices for acquisitions prior to ordering its $600-million El Capitan high-performance computing system, a congressional watchdog said in a report this week. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) urged National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to do a more detailed analysis of alternatives in the future, and […]

A week after a coalition of citizen groups threatened to sue without more environmental vetting, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration approved the first critical decision toward ramping up pit production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Wednesday said it has approved Critical Decision […]

The Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration this week appointed two new deputy managers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory field office in New Mexico. Jason Saenz will be the new deputy manager for technical operations and Paula “Erika” Wisdom will be the deputy manager for business, security and missions as a new […]

The Department of Energy said this week it plans to extend the current Waste Control Specialists agreement for storing some potentially combustible drums of transuranic waste in Texas beyond the June 7 expiration date. The DOE Office of Environmental Management published the notice of award for extension of the current sole-source contract Wednesday on a […]

he Department of Energy’s prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has hired a Kiewit affiliate, The Industrial Co. or TIC, as the replacement subcontractor to complete construction of a major underground ventilation project. Nuclear Waste Partnership in a Wednesday press release it has awarded the subcontract, worth about $163 million, […]

Across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s sites and Washington headquarters, the trickle of current positive cases remained steady at under 200 this week, while the number of vaccines administered across the nuclear security enterprise continued to climb. Due to revised Department of Energy guidelines, NNSA is only reporting confirmed active cases and any additional deaths, […]

Public interest groups are ready to sue the Department of Energy and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration over what they claim is insufficient review of plans for expanded plutonium pit production in South Carolina and New Mexico. The coalition claims the government failed to adequately review plans to “vastly ramp up production” of nuclear […]

Barring extensions, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has four contracts set to expire within the next 60 days, according to the contract summary page for the $7-billion-plus nuclear cleanup branch. Portsmouth Mission Alliance, a partnership between North Wind Group and Swift & Staley, has the roughly five-year, $190-million infrastructure service contract at […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week published a minor amendment to Waste Control Specialists’s state radioactive material license, allowing the company to keep potentially combustible drums of Department of Energy transuranic waste at a commercial site in Andrews County until Dec. 23, 2022. The amendment proposed Dec. 9 by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) […]

The New Mexico Environment Department recently gave its blessing to a Department of Energy’s plan to commence remediation of radioactive contamination along a public road just outside Los Alamos National Laboratory property. The work plan stipulates that DOE will start its field work on Middle DP Road in April and it should last six months, […]

Within 10 years, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management hopes to have its vitrification plant humming at the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 40% of the tanks closed at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and also be about done with legacy cleanup at the Moab Site in Utah as well […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Wednesday published a minor amendment to Waste Control Specialists’s state radioactive material license, allowing the company to keep potentially combustible drums of Department of Energy transuranic waste at a commercial site in Andrews County until Dec. 23, 2022. The amendment proposed Dec. 9 by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) […]

The New Mexico Environment Department last week gave its blessing to a Department of Energy’s plan to commence remediation of radioactive contamination along a public road just outside Los Alamos National Laboratory property. The work plan stipulates that DOE will start its field work on Middle DP Road in April and it should last six […]