By John Stang
Perma-Fix expects its GeoMelt radioactive waste treatment system to go into fuller production in late 2018 at its Washington state location, according to President and CEO Mark Duff.
Early this year, the Atlanta-based waste management company entered into a contract with Veolia Nuclear Solutions to install its patented vitrification technology in Perma-Fix’s Richland facility in eastern Washington. The system would vitrify small amounts of contaminated sodium wastes, generated from sodium coolants in nuclear reactors, converting the material into a glass form through use of heat and electrodes. The initial tests are being conducted on small volumes of contaminated sodium wastes from the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington and Idaho National Laboratory, Duff said.
The Richland GeoMelt operation could eventually accept larger amounts of reactor wastes from other locations. No information has yet been made public on how much waste the GeoMelt operations would handle at full production or on the specific customers that would contract the Perma-Fix.
“We expect this vitrification capability to come in in Q4 and will provide the capacity to treat non-bulk sodium waste as otherwise represented a waste stream with no path for disposition. Completion of this capability is critical to Perma-Fix and the federal government as it will allow us to address large inventories of radioactive waste currently in storage,” Duff said during an Aug. 8 conference call on the company’s latest earnings report.
Management, during the call and earnings report, made only passing reference to the company’s test-bed initiative: a pilot program for treatment and disposal of low-level radioactive waste from the Hanford Site. After an initial phase involving 3 gallons of waste, DOE and Perma-Fix are planning for a second test that would grout 2,000 gallons.
Perma-Fix’s net income for the second quarter of 2018 outstripped the number for both the preceding earnings period and the same quarter of last year.
The company reported $610,000 ($0.05 per share) in net income attributable to common stockholders for the period ended June 30. It was the second consecutive positive showing, rising from $136,000 ($0.01 per share) in the first quarter and posting a significant turnaround from a $1.2 million ($0.10 per share) net loss in second-quarter 2017.
The year-over-year improvement was driven by “a net gain of approximately $1.6 million resulting from the exchange of the Series B Preferred Stock of the Company’s M&EC subsidiary for the Company’s Common Stock in a private placement exchange offer, which was consummated on May 30, 2018,” according to Perma-Fix’s earnings release.
Company-wide revenue also rose, from $12.7 million in second-quarter 2017 to $13.2 million this year. Quarterly gross profit was impaired by $1.2 million in expenses connected to the forthcoming closure of Perma-Fix’s Materials and Energy Corp. facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.: dropping from $2.4 million last year to an even $2 million in 2018.
Perma-Fix’s services business, which encompasses operations ranging from radiological safety to radioactive materials management, recorded $4 million in revenue, up from $3.1 million in the prior year. Revenue in the treatment segment, covering four waste processing plants, dropped from $9.6 million to $9.2 million. That was largely the result of reduced waste volume and pressure on pricing due to the mix of waste being treated, management said.
“We have worked hard to increase our bidding activity and proposal quality within the Services segment, and we expect to see the result of our initiatives coming to fruition over the next two quarters,” Duff said during the call. “Whilst Q2 was a bit lighter in proposal activities, including 13 submittals within Services, we’ve seen an unprecedented surge in July and August with opportunities well suited for Perma-Fix from within the DOE, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy. We expect to hear back on more of these projects in the weeks and months ahead.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify details about Perma-Fix’s GeoMelt program.
