By John Stang
Perma-Fix Environmental Services said Thursday that revenue in the first quarter of 2019 dropped by $1 million from the prior year, as the company’s services branch hit a lull in business.
The Atlanta-based nuclear services provider said revenue fell from $12.7 million in first-quarter 2018 to $11.7 million in its latest earnings period. That generated an operating loss of $624,000, down year over year from operating income of $317,000. Net loss attributable to common stockholders landed at $672,000, $0.06 per share, versus a gain of $136,000, $0.01 per share, last year.
Earnings in the services business was more than halved from $3.7 million in first-quarter 2018 to $1.8 million in first-quarter 2019. “The decrease was primarily related to the timing of projects, as the Services Segment completed a number of projects by year end 2018,” according to a Perma-Fix press release. “During the latter part of the first quarter of 2019, the Services Segment was awarded several new contracts with project work for these contracts expected to commence during the second quarter of 2019.”
Perma-Fix boosted quarterly revenue in its treatment segment, from $9 million in 2018 to $9.9 million this year.
Perma-Fix’s treatment section provides processing for low-level radioactive, mixed, and hazardous and non-hazardous wastes, plus disposal services, at various facilities. The company’s services branch provides on-site waste management to commercial and government customers.
During the first quarter, the Department of Energy issued a $4.8 million, 10-month contract task order for a joint venture featuring Perma-Fix, Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Aerostar Perma-Fix TRU Services, for the second phase of the Test Bed Initiative for processing low-activity radioactive tank waste from the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The second phase of the trial program, encompassing 2,000 gallons of waste from Hanford, is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, Perma-Fix President and CEO Mark Duff said in a Thursday teleconference with investors and analysts.
Phase 1, finished in December 2017, involved extraction of 3 gallons of waste from underground tanks at Hanford, moving it by truck to the nearby Perma-Fix Northwest plant for chemical stabilization and immobilization, and then to the Waste Control Specialists low-level waste disposal facility in Texas.
A potential third phase would treat up to 100,000 gallons of low-activity waste. Duff said he hopes in the next couple months to have a better picture of the status of that phase.
If fully implemented, the technology could treat a large portion of the 56 million gallons of tank waste at Hanford, a legacy of decades of plutonium production for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Roughly 90% of that material is low-activity waste.
Duff also said the Veolia GeoMelt radioactive waste treatment system installed at Perma-Fix’s Richland, Wash., treatment plant recently went into steady production. The system vitrifies 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 CEO said he expects Perma-Fix to make $1 million to $2 million on this work during this fiscal year. Perma-Fix already has a contract with DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory to process sodium-contaminated radioactive waste from the Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant in Michigan.
On Wednesday, the Washington state Department of Ecology said it would take public comments from early June into July for a permit application for on-site work at Hanford related to Phase 2 of the Test Bed Initiative. The applicants are DOE and its tank waste contractor at Hanford, Washington River Protection Solutions.
“The Test Bed Initiative (TBI) Phase 2 project will filter and perform ion exchange on supernate from tank SY-101, depositing the pre-treated material into portable containers,” according to an Ecology press release. “The TBI Phase 2 project will be located in the 200 West Area of the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington.”
