Fluor Idaho said Tuesday it intends in the next few months to shrink the workforce at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) at the Idaho National Laboratory by 190 employees.
The contractor will first offer a voluntary separation package in two phases to reduce headcount as the facility nears the end of its mission. If the voluntary self-select separation fails to draw a sufficient response, some workers could be laid off before the current federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, the company said in a press release.
The move is not a surprise. The lab cleanup contractor informed local officials in January it expected to pare its 650-person workforce at AMWTP by about 200 people this summer.
“All Fluor Idaho employees who might want to move on to a new opportunity are eligible to apply for consideration to participate in the Self-Select Voluntary Separation Program,” company spokesman Erik Simpson said by email Wednesday. Those who meet certain criteria will then be approved to leave, starting in May.
“Fluor Idaho is striving to retrain, reassign and help place affected employees in new positions where possible to minimize impacts,” the company said.
The Energy Department opened the facility in 2003 to retrieve, treat, and ship above-ground waste covered by a 1995 settlement between DOE, the state, and the U.S. Navy over nuclear waste storage in Idaho. The agency said Dec. 5 it plans to close the facility in mid-to-late 2019 after it finishes treating and shipping about 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste. The treated sludge goes to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Less than 7,000 cubic meters apparently remain to be shipped.
The AMWTP waste certification and shipping will continue until those missions are complete, Simpson said. The Energy Department decided against using the facility to process and compact waste TRU waste from other Energy Department locations, including the Hanford Site in Washington state.
Earlier this year, Fluor Idaho held a voluntary workforce reduction to trim its Idaho Cleanup Project workforce by about 50 people, mostly managers and salaried staff, in order to realign staffing to meet changing tasks. That voluntary separation did not affect AWWTP.
Fluor Idaho has a workforce of about 1,600 people carrying out its five-year, $1.5 billion contract, which runs through May 2021.
