With the COVID-19 pandemic making telecommuting more routine, the Department of Energy might terminate the lease for office space it secured last year in Albuquerque, N.M., to accommodate certain staff for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an agency spokesperson said by email.
“Due to COVID-19 restrictions,” the Carlsbad Field Office was not able to use newly leased General Services Administration space in Albuquerque in early 2020, the DOE spokesperson said in a reply to a Weapons Complex Monitor inquiry last week. “With the changing work environment, termination of the lease is currently being considered.”
In April 2020, the federal government started hunting for office space in Albuquerque, which is about a four-hour drive from Carlsbad area and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), saying a housing shortage near the disposal site made it tough to fill certain jobs in the Carlsbad office. The federal notice said the government was looking for office space, including a conference room, to serve about 10 staff positions for WIPP.
The Carlsbad Field Office said the local housing crunch was due to a booming regional oil and natural gas production business in recent years. But the coronavirus pandemic was taking root in the United States and most cleanup sites overseen by the DOE Office of Environmental Management directed most employees who could start working at home to do so.
With the increased telecommuting, much of the existing office space is sparsely populated. Acting Environmental Management chief William “Ike” White has said in various speeches during 2021 that COVID-19 has DOE and other federal agencies rethinking the approach to on-site staffing.
A unit of Dallas-based Jacobs has won a contract in the United Kingdom to install a new ventilation system at the Prototype Fast Reactor at the Dounreay site in Scotland.
The prime remediation contractor, Dounreay Site Restoration Limited, a subsidiary of the U.K. ‘s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, said Aug. 4 that Jacobs will remove the current setup and replace it with new fans, discharge stack and monitoring equipment.
Jacobs will also draw up a decommissioning strategy for the fast reactor fuel reprocessing plant in the Fuel Cycle Area, according to the Dounreay Site Restoration press release. The release said Jacobs, an international engineering and construction firm, has been awarded two “multimillion pound contracts” but did not provide a figure.
The ventilation upgrade will “will enable us to safely complete the decommissioning work, whilst ensuring the required environmental controls are in place, over the next 10-15 years,” said Dounreay Site Restoration reactor chief Phil Cartwright.
The Dounreay Site was the hub of Britain’s fast reactor research and development.
Jacobs has a history at Dounreay as part of Cavendish Dounreay Partnership, a joint venture of Jacobs, Amentum, and Cavendish Nuclear.
Earnings rose at Huntington Ingalls Industries, Newport News, Va., in the 2nd quarter, which the shipbuilder and Department of Energy contractor attributed in part to COVID-19’s effects last year on the Virginia-class attack submarine program, according to a press release.
Net earnings for the second quarter ended June 30 were $129 million, compared with $53 million in the second quarter of 2020. Diluted earnings in the second quarter were $3.20 a share, up from $1.30 in the year-ago quarter.
Quarterly revenue was $2.2 billion, up year-over-year from $2 billion.
The quarterly operating income for Technical Solutions, the segment responsible for joint ventures doing business for the National Nuclear Security Administration and DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, was $13 million, compared with $9 million in the second quarter of 2020. Revenue for Technical Solutions was $237 million, down from $320 million, due to the divestiture of the company’s oil and gas business.
A Huntington Ingalls unit is the lead partner Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos, which is in charge of legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico under a potential 10-year, $1.4 billion contract with DOE. Huntington Ingalls is also an integrated subcontractor within Triad National Security, which has the 10-year potential $20-billion laboratory management contract for Los Alamos’ nuclear weapons programs.
The Senate on Monday confirmed a former Department of Energy lawyer with private sector experience to serve as the agency’s new general counsel.
Samuel Walsh, who served at DOE under the Barack Obama administration, was confirmed to his new position as agency general counsel by voice vote in the Senate Monday evening. Walsh was nominated for the role in April.
In his new role, Walsh will be the agency’s top lawyer, responsible for counseling energy secretary Jennifer Granholm as well as the deputy secretary and DOE program offices on legal matters. He’s replacing Bill Cooper, who left the agency in January.
Since 2016, Walsh has been a partner at D.C. law firm Harris, Wiltshire and Grannis, LLP where he represented energy sector clients before federal courts and state agencies. During the Obama administration, he held three positions on the DOE’s legal team. From 2014 to 2016, Walsh was deputy general counsel for energy policy, overseeing DOE’s smaller legal teams for programs such as civilian nuclear power and electricity and fossil energy.
Prior to that, Walsh was assistant general counsel for the agency from 2012 to 2014. Walsh’s first role at the Obama DOE was as senior legal adviser to the general counsel, from 2010 to 2012.
Walsh got his law degree from Harvard, and his master’s degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University.
