Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) became the new contractor in charge of legacy nuclear cleanup at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico effective Monday morning.
The contractor just finished a 90-day transition that has included hiring staff, inspecting cleanup areas and setting up new policy and business procedures, the contractor said in a Tuesday news release.
It replaces former environmental management incumbent Los Alamos National Security (LANS), which is also nearing the end of its term as management and operations contractor at the nuclear-weapon lab.
Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos is a joint venture between Huntington Ingalls Industries subsidiary Stoller Newport News Nuclear (SN3) and BWX Technologies. In December it beat two competitors to secure an Energy Department contract worth roughly $1.39 billion over a decade.
“Our team is ready to go, to take up the important work of cleanup at LANL,” N3B President and Program Manager Nick Lombardo said in the release.
As of April 27, the contractor had hired more than 310 people for the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract. Over 230 of those hired already worked on legacy cleanup, or other duties, at LANL, N3B spokeswoman Kristin Henderson said by email. In an April fact sheet, the contractor said it had not determined the size of its final workforce.
The work will include protecting a key regional aquifer, remediation of contaminated legacy waste sites in and around LANL, and decontamination and demolition of structures.
“We put together a great team, with a vast amount of experience in cleanup from around the DOE complex,” Lombardo said in the news release.
Tech2 Solutions and Longenecker & Associates are significant subcontractors on the project, N3B has said. The new contractor will report to the DOE Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office.
In 2014, DOE decided to separate legacy environmental cleanup at Los Alamos from the management and operations contract. The move was set in motion after a drum of waste from LANL burst open and released radiation into the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., in February 2014.
“N3B is now responsible for the legacy waste program will and operate Area G,” the lab’s hazardous waste storage area, LANL Director Terry Wallace said in a Monday email to staff, which was obtained by Weapons Complex Monitor.
Wallace praised LANS staff who closed out the contractor’s environmental cleanup work at Los Alamos. He cited completion of treatment by March of the lab’s inventory of both remediated and unremediated nitrate salts.
“I want to stress that our national security mission remains and, in fact, is growing,” Wallace said in the email. He said management will work with LANS employees who worked on environmental cleanup and want to continue with the contractor for the national security mission.
Los Alamos National Security, LANL’s management and operations contractor, is a consortium of Bechtel, AECOM, BWXT Technologies, and the University of California. Its contract is set to expire on Sept. 30.
Stoller Parent Sees Emerging Role Within DOE Complex
The award to N3B shows Stoller Newport News Nuclear is gaining more traction across the Energy Department complex, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) President and CEO Mike Petters said Thursday during the quarterly earnings call with financial analysts.
The LANL contract marked the second big DOE award the HII corporate family notched during the second half of 2017, Petters said.
Last May, the NNSA awarded the potential $5 billion, 10-year management and operations contract for the Nevada National Security Site to Mission Support and Test Services LLC (MSTS), a team comprised of Honeywell International, Jacobs Engineering Group, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear.
The Energy Department “is a very important customer with a pretty significant amount of work to do over the next — basically the next same time next 50 years that shipbuilding [a core business for Stoller] is looking out to,” Petters said. “And so, [we are] getting our foot in there and improving our work and working on the hard stuff that they do and getting that right now is a way for us to expand our position in the Department of Energy space.”
HII enjoyed first-quarter 2018 revenue of $1.87 billion, up 8.7 percent from $1.72 billion during the first three months of 2017. Operating income was $191 million, up from $168 million in the first quarter of 2017. Operating margin was 10.2 percent, compared to 8.7 percent a year ago. Diluted earnings per share improved to $3.48 from $2.56 a year ago.
The company attributed the better numbers primarily to higher volume for shipbuilding along with some pension expenses accounting changes.
HII’s Technical Solutions group, which includes the environmental and nuclear businesses, recorded $233 million in revenue during the past quarter, 3.6 percent more than the $225 million during the first quarter of 2017. Reduced nuclear and environmental revenues were offset by greater revenue from oil and gas and fleet support.
Technical Solutions’ operating income landed at $2 million, compared to an operating loss of $18 million a year ago. “The increase was primarily a result of the establishment of an allowance for accounts receivable on a nuclear and environmental commercial contract in 2017,” the company said.
