Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B) is on schedule at the end of April to take over as the new legacy cleanup contractor for the Energy Department’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico.
“We are ready to get started,” Nick Lombardo, president and project manager for the joint venture between Stoller Newport News Nuclear and BWX Technologies, said in a March presentation to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board.
N3B was awarded a potential 10-year, $1.39 billion legacy cleanup contract in December and will succeed Los Alamos Nuclear Security (LANS). The contract transition period runs from Jan. 24 through April 29.
The contract covers a host of cleanup and waste management operations at the lab, including surface and groundwater monitoring and compliance, meeting the terms of a 2016 federal-state consent order on remediation, and drafting interim and permanent solutions for a chromium plume at LANL.
Los Alamos National Security, which is also nearing the end of its term as management and operations contractor at the lab, lost its position after a LANL-origin container of radioactive waste burst open at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., in February 2014.
Los Alamos has had its share of waste-related problems of late. The New Mexico Environment Department said recently it would penalize the DOE facility for having stored five hazardous waste containers too long in certain areas. The site held up shipments of hazardous and mixed low-level waste for three months after discovering it had mislabeled certain waste transported to Colorado for disposal
N3B will work under the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Los Alamos Field Office rather than the department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees management and operations of the lab.
Tech2 Solutions and Longenecker & Associates are key subcontractors on the project, N3B has said.
The transition is designed to ensure transfer of knowledge, hiring of staff, and setup of information technology, among other operations.
The new contractor expects most of the 400 or so legacy employees will transfer over from LANS.
N3B officials said they would work closely with LANS to ensure continuity of the LANL emergency management program.
