The Bechtel-built Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state is continuing its opening weeks of operation and has filled 10 containers as of Monday, Oct. 27, according to the Department of Energy.
The first two containers are scheduled to be shipped to the Hanford Integrated Disposal Facility this week, DOE Office of Environmental Management spokesperson said Thursday Oct. 30.
In addition, Hanford plans to resume pretreating waste at the Tank Side Cesium Removal System in November, the spokesperson said. After billions of dollars, years of planning, work and delays, the Direct-Feed-Low-Activity Waste Facilities began converting some of Hanford’s less-radioactive waste into glass form around Oct. 11.
President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social account Wednesday he ordered the Pentagon to “immediately” begin the process of testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China.
Trump’s announcement came around an hour before he was set to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. It also came the day before Vice Adm. Richard Correll, Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) that is responsible for employing the nation’s nuclear arsenal, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Thursday.
The news also kicked off speculation among members of Congress and nuclear weapons experts on what this means for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Nevada National Security Site.
Companies in the United States and Canada said this week they have agreed to a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy in hopes of speeding development of $80 billion worth of Westinghouse Electric reactor technology.
The nuclear power construction program was announced by Westinghouse, Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management along with the U.S. government. Westinghouse is one of the oldest names in U.S. nuclear circles. Cameco is a Canada-based uranium supplier and Brookfield is a Canadian-American asset manager..
The latter two companies are majority stakeholders in Westinghouse The deal also included a provision where Westinghouse could become publicly traded through an initial public offering.
The House Cleanup Caucus event scheduled for the evening of Nov. 4 at the House Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C. has been postponed, apparently due to the ongoing federal government shutdown,
The organizers announced the move Tuesday. No makeup date was announced in the emailed notice. The invitation-only gathering is hosted by the Energy Facility Contractors Group, the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association and the Nuclear Energy Institute.
This marks the second time the event, which had earlier been scheduled for October, has been cancelled. The federal government shutdown commenced Oct. 1 after Democrats and Republicans in the Senate could not agree to a stopgap funding deal to keep things opens at the end of fiscal 2025.
The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office expects to extend by a year the Deactivation and Remediation contract held by Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership at the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
According to an online procurement notice from late June, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management expects to extend the contract period up to 12 months from June 20, 2027 through June 19, 2028. DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office said in the notice it intended to issue a noncompetitive or no-bid extension to the existing Four Rivers contract.
The deadline was July 25 for any interested parties to comment. There was no online notice found that showed DOE had actually extended the contract’s period yet. Four Rivers is a joint venture made up of Amentum (by virtue of its merger with Jacobs), Fluor and BWXT. The existing contract started in June 2017 and is valued at roughly $1.9 billion, according to a summary of Environmental Management office contracts.
Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, said last week a County Council vote to raise the gross receipts tax to close a budget shortfall would hinder economic growth.
The Los Alamos County Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night to increase the gross receipts tax (GRT) in Los Alamos by 0.625%, effective July 1, 2026, according to local paper the Los Alamos Daily Post. The article said the increase is in response to a “substantial” receipt tax revenue reduction the county will receive from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the county’s largest contributor, since a portion of its operations now fall under New Mexico’s gross receipts tax exemption for manufacturing.
Mason, before the vote, said in an op-ed for the Los Alamos Reporter, another local paper, that he had “concern” about the increase because the lab “did not anticipate this additional cost” as the budget began to stabilize after years of growth for the lab. Local officials responded with their own newspaper columns, stressing that LANL land is not typically available for taxations.