The Battelle-led prime of the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory is shopping for a subcontractor to collect and ship sand contaminated with mercury to a Veolia waste facility in Gum Springs, Ark., from the Upton, N.Y., lab, according to a solicitation posted online Tuesday.
Questions about the work are due by June 5 and proposals should be filed by 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on June 14, according to the notice posted on the government’s System for Award Management (SAM.gov).
The winning contractor will “provide disposal, railroad logistics and transportation for mercury- contaminated sand and debris,” for management contractor Brookhaven Science Associates, according to the notice. The contractor is a partnership between the Research Foundation for the State University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University, and Battelle, according to its website. The work should be done by Dec. 31, according to the solicitation.
The version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act passed out of the House Armed Services Committee this week does not extend a radiation compensation program for nuclear downwinders, Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), said in a Thursday press release.
Vasquez said he unsuccessfully pushed for reauthorization and expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which unless reauthorized, will expire June 7.
The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday voted to keep legally binding pit-production dates that the National Nuclear Security Administration does not believe it will meet.
It was one of the few debates about nuclear weapons during Wednesday’s 12-hour markup of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which the committee passed by 57-1 at about 10:15 p.m. Eastern time. The bill would cap spending at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at $29.95 billion for the first year that starts Oct. 1.
The proposal to repeal the six year-old pit-production deadlines came from Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.). It was one of three nuclear-weapons amendments he offered during committee debate of the full NDAA. In a familiar development for Garamendi, the committee rejected all three.
Thomas Jefferson Rowland, a former director of the nuclear waste vitrification process at the West Valley Demonstration Project in West Valley, N.Y., died at age 86, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported this week.
A U.S. Air Force veteran with a master’s degree in nuclear health physics, Rowland died Tuesday in North Little Rock.
