The Department of Energy’s manager for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico expects to reply by Thanksgiving to a $32-million breach-of-contract suit filed late last month by a joint venture hired to build a major new underground ventilation system.
“Nuclear Waste Partnership will file a response to CAA’s lawsuit by November 21, 2020, subject to any extensions granted by the Court,” contractor spokesman Donavan Mager said in a Tuesday email. “The company will not comment further on this litigation.”
Critical Applications Alliance, a venture jointly owned by Christensen Building Group and Kilgore Industries, two Texas-based businesses, filed suit Oct. 27 in U.S. District Court in New Mexico against Nuclear Waste Partnership: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime contractor led by Amentum, with minority partner BWX Technologies.
In late August, the prime terminated the $135-million agreement to have the joint venture build the new ventilation system which DOE deems vital to returning transuranic waste disposal operations to pre-2014 levels. Ventilation at the salt mine was compromised as a result of a February 2014 underground radiation leak that suspended waste disposal there for about three years.
In the lawsuit, Critical Applications Alliance claims the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, as it is officially known, was saddled with a bad design when the DOE prime contractor hired the construction team in the fall of 2018. The problematic design slowed progress on the project, the subcontractor alleged.
The plaintiff also said Nuclear Waste Partnership is relatively inexperienced with overseeing big construction projects and failed to provide much of the support promised in the ventilation contract. For example, Nuclear Waste Partnership was supposed to provide the construction team with an office trailer with electricity on the jobsite by January 2019. But Nuclear Waste Partnership “would not make one available for another nine months.”
The subcontractor also disputes the WIPP prime’s position that the ventilation subcontract was terminated “for convenience” which would presumably give the prime more leeway to abort the agreement.
The case has been assigned to a federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court.
