The Department of Energy has issued its final request for qualifications for clean energy projects on 9,000 acres of land above its underground disposal site for transuranic waste in New Mexico.
Responses to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) request for qualifications for carbon-free energy projects of at least 200 megawatts are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 15 the agency announced Friday.
The deadline for a prior request for information ended March 20 and an informational meeting on clean energy was held a week later.
The procurement notice was published online by DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office as part of the agency’s Cleanup to Clean Energy program. Questions should be submitted soon, by 11:59 p.m. on April 22, according to material accompanying the notice. Questions should be emailed to [email protected].
AtkinsRéalis this week opened a $20-million technology center in Richland, Wash., near the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to develop nuclear and environmental cleanup technology.
The 16,000-square-foot facility opened Thursday next to the existing AtkinsRéalis Engineering Laboratory and the Washington State University Tri-Cities campus, the company announced in a Thursday press release. Construction on the new technology center started in September 2022 and was finished in 15 months.
Nuclear robotics technology and a Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub will be featured at the technology center, AtkinsRéalis said in the release.
Kathryn Huff will leave the Department of Energy on May 3, only days before what would have concluded her third year at the top of the Office of Nuclear Energy.
Huff shared the news in an email, which the Exchange Monitor saw on Monday. Her departure was first reported by Politico. Mike Goff, Huff’s deputy, will become acting assistant secretary after Huff leaves, Huff said.
“I chose this timing to enable the smoothest transition back to my professorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where my beloved research, students, husband, and dog await,” Huff wrote in her farewell email.
Tennessee-based Boston Government Services said Monday it has hired a Leidos executive, Darrell Graddy, as chief strategy officer.
Graddy spent eight years in Leidos involved in business development and project management and also spent 30 years in management roles at Lockheed Martin, Boston Government Services said in the press release.
According to the release, Graddy is known around the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee for holding executive posts with Consolidated Nuclear Security, helping run the Y-12 National Security Complex there. Leidos is a minority partner in the Bechtel-led contractor that also runs the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant in Texas.
While the Department of Energy issued a request for qualifications for potential developers of solar projects at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, DOE expects to hold an information day soon on other carbon-free energy projects that would take longer to permit and build.
The request for qualifications, published in March, supports DOE’s goal to meet President Joe Biden’s goal in Executive Order 14057 reaching net 100% carbon-free energy usage at Savannah River by 2030, according to documents made public last week.
DOE will host another information day in May for parties interested in promoting other carbon-free energy technologies, such as small modular reactors, which “are further away from commercial readiness,” according to materials released with an April 11 online procurement update. It was included in questions and answers posted following a Feb. 29 information day.
The Department of Energy announced April 11 in a Federal Register notice it is renewing the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board for two more years.
The board, set up under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, offers local advice on nuclear cleanup-related issues to DOE’s assistant secretary for environmental management. The renewal was effective April 8, according to the Federal Register notice.
While there is only one umbrella national board chartered under the Advisory Committee Act, eight local boards exist serving the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Idaho National Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Nevada National Security Site, the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the Paducah Site in Kentucky, the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Environmental Management Advisory Board chairs next meet May 1 in Chillicothe, Ohio near the Portsmouth Site.
Barclay Lew, who worked on the licensing of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, and consulted for multiple Department of Energy nuclear weapon sites, died Jan. 15 in Honolulu, according to an obituary posted online this week. He was 72.
Lew worked at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colo., the Hanford Site in Washington State and DOE headquarters, according to the obit.
