Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/20/2014
Parsons last week rejected the Department of Energy’s “best and final” offer for a new agreement for commissioning and startup of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, leaving uncertainty in the path forward for startup, WC Monitor has learned. SWPF startup talks have been ongoing since last summer, when a new agreement-in-principle was reached that covered only construction. While there is a current contract in place for facility commissioning, the cost target included would only cover about a third of commissioning. Instead of developing a new contract, the Department and Parsons are expected to consider developing an over target baseline in order to complete the effort.
DOE and Parsons have been negotiating a new contract for the SWPF since delays in the delivery of key tanks for the facility increased the project’s price tag substantially. The agreement-in-principle reached in June 2013 covering only construction and pushed out completion of the facility from 2014 to late 2016. Since then, talks have continued on for a separate agreement covering the startup portion. DOE’s fact finding process for the discussions began in September, and formal negotiations began in December. Parsons submitted a “best and final offer” in late March for a startup agreement, which the Department subsequently countered in April. When asked about the talks, Parsons referred request for comment to DOE, which declined to comment.
DOE Official Emphasized New Deal Not Necessary
Last month DOE Savannah River Manager Dave Moody emphasized that a new startup deal is not necessary to begin operations of the plant. “We have a contract for commissioning and one year of hot startup and we are proceeding down that path with that contract,” Moody said at a Congressional Nuclear Cleanup Caucus Briefing in May. “So there is no deadline that we have to meet on the next negotiation. If we can mutually agree to an acceleration moving that forward we can do it, but our current contract allows us to move forward, finishing construction early and then moving right into commissioning.”
While the new agreement for construction includes fee incentives for completion ahead of schedule, the existing startup contract doesn’t have any incentives. “We’ll continue to look at how we can negotiate a contract that challenges both entities. Because the commissioning piece of this has drug out too long on startup of all our major nuclear facilities, I think we both need to be incentivized and that’s really what we are looking fo,” Moody said in May. “If we can negotiate that, great. If not, we need to figure out how we can gain those efficiencies for commissioning during the process of exercising the current contract.” He added: “The goal is to move forward and not drag this out. We’re constructing a beautiful facility, we are running the pilot day in and day out, we are honing those things. So we want to be able to start up and run.”
