The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is drafting its formal response to public comments filed on the Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration field office said last week.
The environmental assessment public comment period ended Feb. 20 on the upgrade project for the electric power grid serving the DOE lab, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) field office manager Ted Wyka told the Los Alamos County Council March 19.
NNSA proposes to build a 14-mile, 115-kilovolt power transmission line and related electric infrastructure upgrades on public land in the Caja del Rio area of Santa Fe County. Projections show by 2026 existing power lines “will reach capacity” and soon be insufficient to support the lab’s national security mission, Wyka said.
The Department of Energy nuclear cleanup branch has awarded a total of $24.7 million to minority-serving institutions in six states in order to support a diverse engineering and technology workforce, according to an agency press release.
The competitive grant awards range from $2.1 million to $4.8 million per university and run for three years from April 1, 2024, through March 31, 2027, according to the press release.
The institutions winning the grants are: the University of California-Merced, California State University-Fresno and the University of California-Berkeley; Florida A&M University in partnership with Kentucky State University and Clark Atlanta University; Rutgers University in Newark, N.J.; University of Nevada-Las Vegas; New Mexico State University and Texas State University in partnership with Prairie View A&M University.
There are about three-dozen small businesses on the “interested vendors list” published by the Department of Energy earlier this month for a potential Technical, Management, and Administrative Services contract at the Oak Ridge Site’s Environmental Management field office in Tennessee.
The list was published earlier this month by DOE’s procurement office as a means to help small businesses put together teams for a successor contract to the $34-million agreement held by Maryland-based Link Technologies. The incumbent contract will expire in April 2025, according to DOE. The alphabetical listing starts with Aleut Federal and runs through Twenty39, LLC.
The agency issued a pre-solicitation notice in February after issuance of a request for information-sources sought notice in January.
Although Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a major fiscal 2024 appropriations bill last weekend, it did not include an extension of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), said via social media.
“Total failure,” Hawley said last on the website X after learning the radiation compensation extension would not make it into the spending bill. “Politicians have talked like this for decades. While doing nothing. The time to talk is over. The time to ACT is now. Put RECA on the floor and vote on it.”
The Senate has passed a Hawley-backed bill to extend the radiation worker compensation bill that would otherwise expire in June. Hawley earlier tried unsuccessfully to attach the extension to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2024.
The Department of Energy prime for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Monday stood by its handling of a January incident where two workers were temporarily stuck in a hoist 1,500-feet below the surface of the facility in Eddy County, N.M.
“The safety of our workforce is always our top priority,” a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) contractor spokesperson said by email Monday. “Constant communications were maintained with the employees until power was restored. Based upon the system design and the events that occurred, our team followed the proper reporting protocols, ensuring the safety of all employees involved,” the spokesperson added.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff said this month DOE and its prime, Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, should have reported the incident into DOE’s Occurrence Reporting and Processing System. Two workers were stuck inside the waste hoist’s man cage for up to 30 minutes on Jan. 23, due to a digital glitch that caused a power loss, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report.
