SUMMERLIN, NEV. —Jacobs-led Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership will stay on beyond the five-year base period of its Deactivation and Remediation contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, the contractor’s chief operating officer said here Thursday.
“I’m very happy to say that we got the option period to continue to work” for at least another three years, Jason Casper, Four Rivers chief operating officer, said here during the Radwaste Summit, hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications.
In addition to the three-year option, the Department of Energy also holds a two-year option, which if eventually exercised could keep Four Rivers at Paducah into June 2027. The contract is potentially worth $1.4-billion over 10 years.
The DOE decision to pick up the three-year option is not a surprise. While the agency issued a request for information/sources sought for Paducah cleanup in February 2021, the agency never followed up with a draft request for proposals on replacing Four Rivers.
The Four Rivers workforce is about 1,000 people, split evenly between unionized and salaried employees at Paducah, Casper said.
Casper made the announcement for Four Rivers, made up of Jacobs, Fluor and BWX Technologies, during a joint session with Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, the remediation contractor for DOE’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. A day earlier, DOE’s Joel Bradburne, who oversees the two sites, discussed the agency’s perspective on Portsmouth and Paducah.
Fluor-BWXT chief operating officer Greg Wilkett, said Four Rivers managers are frequent visitors to Portsmouth. Wilkett’s comment was in response to a question from moderator Tammy Monday, an AVANTech vice president.
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site is about eight years ahead of Paducah when it comes to deactivation and demolition, Casper said this week at the summit.
The focus at Paducah currently is deactivation of large contaminated buildings, Casper said. By contrast, Wilkett said Fluor-BWXT is on the verge of taking the X-326 Process Building down to the slab level.
Fluor-BWXT is roughly 12 years into its tenure at Portsmouth, under what began as a 10-year contract. Thanks to extensions “we have about nine months left during this period of performance,” Wilkett said.
The Portsmouth cleanup business is currently valued at about $4.4-billon and DOE is soliciting for a new follow-on contract at the facility.
Fluor-BWXT has about 2,100 people split between union and salaried employees, Wilkett said.
