Aptim Federal Services of Baton Rouge, La., has been awarded a $68-million Department of Energy task order to take down the former Ion Beam Facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, DOE said in a Thursday press release.
The task order, announced by the DOE Office of Environmental Management, is to be completed within 57 months and was issued under the agency’s Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning, and Removal contract. Aptim beat out the other eight contractors selected for nationwide demolition work in July 2020.
Built in 1951, operation of the Ion Beam Facility ceased in 1999, DOE said in the release. The facility supported post-World War II scientific research and also housed equipment used for nuclear experimentation and aided in developing weapons technology, the agency said.
The U.S. Senate Thursday evening passed its fiscal 2024 nuclear policy act legislation in a bipartisan 86-to-11 vote, which includes $7.1 billion for defense-related nuclear cleanup authorization, roughly equal to what the White House requested and slightly more than the $7 billion-plus appropriated in fiscal 2023.
Along with issues such as military pay raises, the National Defense Authorization Act authorizes maximum funding levels for the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Defense Environmental Cleanup budget for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. “I am hopeful that working alongside the House, we will send a bill to the president’s desk that puts our national defense on a path toward improving our deterrent capabilities,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a press release.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) won passage 62-to-31, of an NDAA amendment to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act “to cover victims of improperly stored Manhattan Project waste in St. Louis, Mo,” the lawmaker said in a press release. Hawley has pushed for Congressional relief for residents in the vicinity of the now-closed Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Mo. Hawley has questioned the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers finding the area around the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program site is safe from a radiological standpoint.
The cesium pretreatment pilot project at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state halted its third operating cycle and entered an early outage on July 1 after a small leak of treated waste turned up during routine maintenance, DOE confirmed Thursday.
The early end to the Tank Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) system’s third batch run, which started in March, was disclosed in a recent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report. “Based on the fact that the batch was nearly complete, the planned outage was started a few days early to change out the [ion exchange] columns, perform scheduled maintenance” and related work, a DOE spokesperson said via email.
TSCR treated 168,000 during this latest batch run and has treated a total of 541,000 gallons since the pilot project, overseen by Washington River Protection Solutions, started in January 2022, the DOE spokesperson said. The goal remains to treat up to one million gallons prior to the start of hot commissioning of the Low-Activity Waste Facility in the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, currently anticipated in 2025. The plant can treat Hanford’s less radioactive liquid waste as long as cesium is removed from it first.
Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Council last week held video interviews with a half-dozen candidates to be city manager for the municipality, population 31,000, which borders the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site.
Zoom interviews with candidates to succeed City Manager Mark Watson, who retired on May 5, occurred July 17-18, according to a post on the city’s website.
Among other duties, the local government wants an administration that can “effectively represent the city’s interests in interactions with multiple DOE components and federal contractors,” according to the website. The candidates listed online after being winndowned down by the council include local government administrators from North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The Department of Energy’s deputy manager for nuclear cleanup at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina said Monday that thousands of acres are available within the 310-square mile property for “clean energy” development, under a DOE-wide initiative.
Solar power was mentioned specifically this week’s meeting of the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory board by DOE’s deputy environmental manager for the site, Edwin Deshong III. However, a DOE spokesperson said via email the land, spread across five parcels, could be available for various types of non-carbon emitting power generation. Agency managers said they are actively discussing clean energy options with Dominion Energy in South Carolina.
