Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth marked a major cleanup milestone at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, taking out the final component of radio-contaminated process gas equipment from the X-326 facility, DOE said Wednesday.
Fluor removed the last of more than 7,000 components on March 21, DOE said in a press release. Getting the X-326 building “cold and dark” by June 30, 2017 — ready to be torn down, but sufficiently maintained to be safe for demolition crews — is the top priority for Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth during a 30-month contract option just triggered by DOE.
The 60-year-old building, which was used in uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons and later for reactors, would have to be torn down by the end of the second 30-month option period in spring of 2021.
The next step for X-326 deactivation is characterizing auxiliary systems slated for demolition and extracting held-up uranium and hazardous materials in those systems, DOE said Wednesday.
The first of the two options in Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth’s updated site cleanup contract, approved by DOE on March 29, is worth just under $870 million and keeps the company on the job through Sept. 30, 2018. The second option, which would extend the work through March 28, 2021, is worth just over $695 million. Combined, the options are potentially worth slightly more than $1.55 billion to the company.
That puts the total possible value of the contract at more than $3.1 billion over 10 years. When the deal was announced in 2010, it was valued at about $2.1 billion over a decade.
