The procurement arm of the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office is requesting information from contractors capable of storing and disposing of low-level or mixed low-level hazardous waste, according to a recent online notice.
The DOE’s Cincinnati-based Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center issued a sources sought/request for information (RFI) on Thursday April 21, trying to identify businesses capable of tasks now carried out by incumbents EnergySolutions in Utah and Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in Texas.
The notice specifies the DOE business center “is seeking information regarding the ability and availability of qualified contractors to provide for permanent disposal” of various wastes that fall under either the Atomic Energy Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act. This can include Class A, B, or C low-level waste and mixed low-level waste, in addition to byproduct material, and technologically-enhanced, naturally-occurring radioactive material, also known as TENORM. Sealed radioactive sources are also in the mix.
The DOE is looking for “qualified, interested” businesses that either already have or can soon acquire the necessary expertise, facilities, personnel and licenses to do work now under two separate indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts, held by WCS and EnergySolutions.
The existing contracts each began in April 2018 and sunset in April 2023, according to the notice.
Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions has awarded a $4.8-million subcontract to a Pasco, Wash., company for a groundwater protection project at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), the tank management contractor at Hanford, announced in a Monday press release it retained Elite Construction and Development to build the first phase of a football-field-sized protective barrier for U Tank Farm’s 16 underground tanks.
The project will collect and evaporate water drained from a future interim asphalt surface barrier over the tanks, preventing rain and snow from moving tank waste contaminants closer to groundwater, according to the WRPS release.
This will be the sixth such barrier at the site, which are temporary measures, WRPS said. The project should be completed this year and will involve digging up 8,500 cubic yards of soil, installing a liner and piping system to collect runoff and revegetating the area.
Parties to a COVID-19 vaccination lawsuit against the Department of Energy prime contractor for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have settled on a mediator.
The six laboratory employees who object to the mandatory vaccination policy and defendant UT-Battelle, the operations contractor, have agreed to use Knoxville attorney Chadwick Hatmaker to mediate the case. That is according to a Monday filing with the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee. Hatmaker’s primary areas of practice include employment and labor law, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The parties expressed interest in settling the case in a filing earlier this month with U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr.
The plaintiffs initially brought their case against the contractor in October 2021, weeks after President Joe Biden issued an executive order effectively calling for all government contractor employees who fail to qualify for an exemption to be inoculated against the potentially deadly illness. The vast majority of feds and contract employees in the DOE weapons complex elected to go ahead and get vaccinated.
While still low, the confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Department of Energy nuclear cleanup worksites inched upward again this week.
There were 39 active cases of COVID-19 across the DOE Office of Environmental Management complex, an office spokesperson said in a Thursday email. That is up 16 from the prior week total of 23, and up 10 from the 13 recorded two weeks ago.
Both figures are still a fraction of the hundreds being recorded weekly during February, corresponding with the spread of the omicron variant. Since then, however, the DOE has changed its COVID-reporting method, as it is no longer counting cases for offsite telecommuters.
As of press time Friday, 993,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic officially started in the United States in early 2020, according to data from the online Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Center.
