The Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services joint venture has started work on an Energy Department contract to process depleted uranium hexafluoride left over from Cold War uranium enrichment in Ohio and Kentucky.
In late September, DOE awarded Mid-America Conversion Services a five-year, $318 million depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) treatment contract, unseating incumbent BWXT Conversion Services. Fluor Corp. and Westinghouse are partners with Atkins on the new deal. Mid-America announced the start of work in a Friday press release, not long after a 90-day transition period from one contractor to the next wrapped up on Jan. 31.
BWX Technologies, parent of the old incumbent, had bid on the follow-on contract itself. The Lynchburg, Va.-based company did not protest DOE’s award to Mid-America.
Mid-America’s combination cost-plus-award-fee and firm-fixed-price contract covers conversion of DUF6 produced during decades of uranium enrichment at DOE’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites in Ohio and Kentucky, which shut down in 2001 and 2013, respectively. In total, they left behind more than 700,000 metric tons of DUF6.
Mid-America will convert DUF6 into two compounds: depleted uranium oxide for reuse or disposal, and aqueous hydrofluoric acid for industrial use.
The contract also covers maintenance services for Portsmouth and Paducah conversion facilities, disposing of waste created by the job, and surveilling and maintaining DUF6 cylinder storage yards at both sites.
