DOE HASN’T RULED OUT PRIVATIZING ONSITE DISPOSAL AT PORTSMOUTH

The Department of Energy is not ruling out a privatization option for a proposed onsite disposal cell for the Portsmouth D&D project, DOE Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Manager Bill Murphie told WC Monitor yesterday.  “We’re looking at all of our options, so that’s something I’ll be talking to headquarters about,” Murphie said when asked yesterday on the sidelines of the Energy Facilities Contractors Group semi-annual meeting. The privatization approach would entail a private company putting up approximately $100 million to construct the disposal cell,and then recouping its investment through operations for approximately 10 years, officials familiar with the issue told WC Monitor in October.

Companies including EnergySolutions and Fluor have discussed the privatization option with DOE, WC Monitor has learned, but the Department has yet to make a formal decision on whether to establish an onsite disposal cell at Portsmouth, and is still going through the regulatory process. “You can’t get out in front of a decision on the cell itself, so we’ll have to wait for that and then we’ll have to coordinate all of that of headquarters before any path forward can be taken,” Murphie said.