Mid-America Conversion Services, the Atkins-led incumbent running the Department of Energy’s depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion program, employs a workforce of more than 400 people in Kentucky and Ohio, according to procurement information recently posted online.
As of June 1 Mid-America has 200 employees at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, 119 union members and the rest salaried, according to questions and answers posted online June 27 by DOE as part of the competition it is holding for a new follow-on contract, which will include some tasks the current deal doesn’t.
At the Paducah Site in Kentucky, Mid-America, which also includes partners Westinghouse and Fluor, employs 204 people, including 107 union members, according to the DOE data. At the Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office in Lexington, Ky., the contract has 18 employees, all salaried, according to the question-and-answer document.
Bids are due July 25 on the follow-up Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Contract. The new contract would combine DUF6 operations with certain other operations and support work at the Paducah and Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant sites, plus nuclear weapons work for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The accord is potentially worth $2.9 billion over 10 years.
Mid-America has the existing contract valued at $703 million, which started in February 2017 and runs through March 28, 2023. The program is designed to take depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) generated by decades of uranium enrichment at DOE’s Portsmouth, Paducah and Oak Ridge in Tennessee, into a more stable uranium oxide form. (The Oak Ridge DUF6 has been relocated to the other sites). The DOE has announced plans to extend the current DUF6 contract through September 2023.
At the same time, DOE is also accepting bids until July 11 for the 10-year, $5.87-billion, Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract, a follow-on to the existing $4.4-billion business held by incumbent Fluor-BWXT which began in March 2011 and like the Mid-America deal currently runs March 2023, with DOE planning a six-month extension through September 2023.
