A lawsuit by a fired ventilation project subcontractor against the Department of Energy’s prime for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has been settled, according to papers filed in a federal district court in New Mexico.
The litigation brought by Christensen Building Group and its Critical Applications Alliance venture against Nuclear Waste Partnership was dismissed by Senior U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera with the “understanding that the case has settled,” according to the two-page order.
The settlement is not a big surprise as the parties filed court papers in early April with the U.S. District Court in New Mexico saying they were mediating their dispute.
The amount of the settlement was not disclosed in the court order and Nuclear Waste Partnership declined comment in reply to an email inquiry from Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
The plaintiff initially sought $32 million from Nuclear Waste Partnership, an Amentum-BWX Technologies venture, after the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) management contractor terminated the subcontractor “for convenience” in August 2020. The WIPP prime evidently felt the Texas-based subcontractor was not making sufficient headway on its $135 million award to build the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) project.
The project is designed to triple underground airflow to the DOE transuranic waste disposal site to 540,000 cubic feet per minute. That should grant the facility sufficient airflow to simultaneously dispose of waste, do maintenance and mine out new disposal panels. WIPP has been unable to handle such multi-tasking since a February 2014 underground radiation leak contaminated portions of the underground and forced the complex out of service for about three years.
In late April, Nuclear Waste Partnership formally replaced the terminated subcontractor with Kiewit affiliate, The Industrial Co., which received a $163-million deal.
Before the pandemic and before it parted company with the original subcontractor, DOE and Nuclear Waste Partnership envisioned having the new ventilation system up and running as early as 2022. But following a project re-baselining, the new completion target is 2025.
