It was not clear Wednesday how a Canadian company’s multibillion-dollar offer to acquire engineering giant Atkins would affect the company’s work on the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear cleanup operations.
SNC-Lavalin Group of Montreal on Monday confirmed it had offered some $3.5 billion to buy London-based Atkins. The company has a presence, among other places, at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state, and the Portsmouth and Paducah sites in Ohio and Kentucky.
At Portsmouth and Paducah, Atkins is the lead partner on the Mid-America Conversion Services joint venture with Fluor and Westinghouse. In February, the company started work on a five-year contract worth almost $320 million to convert DOE-owned depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) into depleted uranium oxide for reuse or disposal, and aqueous hydrofluoric acid for industrial use.
Atkins is also a partner on the AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions, lead contractor for the tanks farms at the Hanford Site, where the agency stores more than 55 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste left over from Cold War plutonium production.
