This week the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved construction of a near-surface disposal facility at the Chalk River Laboratories site in Deep River, Ontario after finding the facility would not cause significant ill effects to a nearby river or traditional land of indigenous peoples.
The quasi-judicial tribunal announced the decision in a Jan. 9 press release following issuance of a record of decision. There was some First Nations tribal opposition to the decision, according to published accounts in the Canadian press.
Chalk River Laboratories, owned by the federal Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, applied in 2017 to build a disposal facility for up to 1 million cubic meters of solid low-level radioactive waste, such as building materials and contaminated personal protective clothing. Most of it is now stored at the Chalk River lab site. Some will come from other Atomic Energy of Canada Limited sites as well as Canadian universities and hospitals. A backgrounder on the project can be found here.
The Department of Energy is looking for information from small businesses with the ability to provide technical, management and administrative services at the agency’s Environmental Management office at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
The request for information (RFI) notice was posted online Jan. 8 via the System Awards Management website, SAM.GOV. Capability statements are due by 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, Jan. 30.
Maryland-based Link Technologies is the incumbent provider under a $34-million contract scheduled to expire in April 2025, according to materials filed with the notice. The Link website lists government contracts for NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and several across DOE’s nuclear weapons complex. The RFI work would include routine technical analyses, document prep, information management, technical editing, record keeping and various other work supporting environmental cleanup at the DOE site
Rick McLeod, a longtime hand on Department of Energy weapons complex issues, has joined the Washington, D.C.-based Energy Communities Alliance to help the advocacy group’s community-based siting program for radioactive waste.
McLeod retired as head of the non-profit Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization about a year ago and has been doing consulting work. Energy Communities Alliance is developing materials for municipalities looking at hosting consolidated interim storage facilities for radioactive waste, McLeod said in a LinkedIn post.
Department of Energy contractor BWX Technologies has appointed former Boeing executive Nicole Piasecki to its board of directors effective Jan. 2.
Piasecki spent 25 years with Boeing in various senior leadership positions, including vice president and general manager of the Propulsion Systems Division for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She currently serves on the boards of BAE Systems and Weyerhaeuser.
Piasecki is also a senior advisor to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and previously chaired the board of Seattle University. She started her career in a family-owned vertical lift research and development business and later worked as an engineer for United Technologies before joining Boeing. She previously held appointments with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Management Advisory Council and the U.S. Department of Aviation’s Future of Aviation Committee, BWX said in a statement.
“Oppenheimer,” the 2023 movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer, first director of what is now the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was honored as the year’s best movie drama on Jan. 7 at the Golden Globe awards ceremony.
Cillian Murphy, the actor who portrayed the scientist, was named best actor for his performance and Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan was honored as best director. Less than a year before the movie was released, DOE vacated the 1954 revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance.
A report on the awards ceremony, broadcast on CBS television, can be found here.
Last month the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a $13.4 million contract to Enviro-Fix Solutions to clean up a 55-acre site near Cleveland once used by the former Atomic Energy Commission for uranium processing during the 1940s and 1950s.
The cleanup contract for sections of the former Harshaw Chemical Company Site was issued as part of the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program and was announced in a December press release by the Corps. Uranium from the Cleveland area site was subsequently sent on to the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee for further processing, according to a fact sheet.
The remediation work starts this summer and includes removal of contaminated soil and debris cleanup, according to the release. The Corps tore down the uranium processing building in 2014-2015 and the current owner of the property, BGD Company, removed other structures at the site, according to the release.
