Following the completion of decommissioning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ STURGIS barge is scheduled next week to be towed for shipbreaking.
All parts of the STURGIS’ retired MH-1A nuclear reactor and other radioactive waste on the vessel have been removed at the Port of Galveston, Texas, and shipped to Waste Control Specialists’ disposal facility in West Texas. That encompasses 1.5 million pounds of waste and 600,000 pounds of lead from the reactor-containment canopy directed for recycling, the Army Corps announced last week.
After several weeks of surveys for potential contamination at the decommissioning site, the Army Corps determined it was safe to tow the STURGIS. Final planning was underway as of Sept. 14.
“We anticipate finishing the necessary documentation and planning to be ready to tow the STURGIS from Galveston to Brownsville the week of September 24th,” Brenda Barber, project manager at the USACE Baltimore District’s Environmental and Munitions Design Center, said in an email update on the project. “The tow is planned to take about three days. The team will closely monitor the weather in the area to ensure conditions are safe prior to beginning the tow.”
International Shipbreaking Ltd. will tow the vessel and then conduct shipbreaking under a $1.9 million contract awarded in May. Actual shipbreaking is expected to wrap up early next year, Barber said – International Shipbreaking has estimated the project would take six to eight months, including abatement of asbestos and other hazards. The program will involve recycling about 5,500 tons of steel and other metals from the vessel
Demobilization and the last checks for radiological contamination at the Port of Galveston work site are expected to last four weeks.
The STURGIS was a World War II Liberty Ship that was subsequently deployed with a nuclear power reactor to provide energy in Panama from 1968 to 1976. It was towed from the James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia to the Port of Galveston in April 2015. The entire decommissioning cost was set at just shy of $66.5 million, Barber said.
The decommissioning award had initially been set at $34.6 million, but the contract held by APTIM Federal Services (previously CB&I Federal Services) grew through two modifications due to the project’s “complexity and challenges,” Barber said earlier this year. Among those, Army Corps officials said at an industry event in March, were a six-month delay while the Galveston City Council was persuaded to allow work to proceed and treatment of ballast water from STURGIS for lead contamination.
Meanwhile, the Army Corps is continuing planning for decommissioning its other two retired nuclear power reactors under the Deactivated Nuclear Power Plant Program: SM-1, which operated from 1957 to 1973 at Fort Belvoir, Va.; and SM-1A, which operated from 1962 to 1972 at Fort Greely, Alaska.
The planning contract for each plant is held by AECOM-Tidewater JV, with a total value of $8.5 million.
A request for proposals for the Fort Belvoir job is anticipated next May, followed by an award around June 2020. The RFP for decommissioning the Fort Greely reactor is due in 2021, with an award in 2022. Both projects are expected to last five years.
