DOE MAY BREAK OUT WORK FOR OAK RIDGE SLUDGE FACILITY

The Department of Energy is considering breaking out contracts for engineering and construction of a new facility for processing sludge waste at Oak Ridge, Environmental Management Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition & Project Management Jack Surash said yesterday at the Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum. DOE last August told contractor Wastren Advantage, Inc. to stop work on design and planning of the Sludge Processing Facility Buildout Project at Oak Ridge’s Transuranic Waste Processing Center. “The project is under review now, stay tuned for progress,” Surash said, adding, “We’ve learned our lesson from the bigger construction projects. We are not going to put out a contract when the technology is not mature. So we’ll probably break this into chunks.”

The Sludge Processing Facility Buildout Project was under development by WAI to process about 2,000 cubic meters of remote-handled sludge inventory at Oak Ridge’s Melton Valley storage tanks. “We have a small to medium nuclear construction project, the sludge treatment project, on our hands,” Surash said. “So what you’re going to see us doing is we are going to mature that technology. We are probably going to do a pilot plant and then we may enhance the design. So this probably lends itself to a separate effort.”