Bruce Covert has officially taken over as president and project manager of Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), the prime contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, DOE announced Monday.
Covert replaces Philip Breidenbach, who oversaw the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s (WIPP) recovery since 2015 and will return to one of NWP’s parent companies, AECOM.
“Breidenbach will return to AECOM to support other projects in the DOE and nuclear market,” according to a DOE press release.
AECOM announced the move May 4.
Covert takes over as DOE and Nuclear Waste Partnership prepare to ramp up waste disposal at WIPP from about two interments a week when the mine reopened in December to as many as five by the end of the year.
Covert was most recently AECOM group vice president and project director for waste management projects for Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd., the partnership leading cleanup and demolition of the former Dounreay fast reactor research and development site in Scotland. He has also worked for Washington Closure Hanford, the former river-corridor cleanup project contractor for DOE’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.
Covert comes on the scene with the base period of NWP’s WIPP management and operations contract set to expire Sept. 30. DOE holds a one-year option and a four-year option on the deal, which would be worth about $2 billion if the agency exercises both extensions.
WIPP reopened late last year after a nearly three-year hiatus following an accident underground radiation release blamed on a shoddily packaged barrel of transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico.
Restarting WIPP has cost DOE about $1.5 billion over roughly three years, including NWP’s management and operations contract. Returning underground ventilation back to pre-accident levels is expected to push the total bill for the recovery closer to $2 billion.
WIPP fared well in president Donald Trump’s 2018 budget request. The White House is seeking $323 million for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The site got about $290 million for its defense environmental cleanup mission in the fiscal 2017 omnibus appropriations bill signed into law last month.
