The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said this week that workers have removed the reactor pressure vessel from the STURGIS barge, a key step in completion of dismantlement of the radiologically contaminated vessel.
Work began in 2015 at the Port of Galveston in Texas to decommission and disassemble the onetime World War II Liberty Ship that was later fitted with a nuclear reactor to power U.S. military and civilian operations in the Panama Canal in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beginning in late April, workers removed large parts from the STURGIS’ reactor containment vessel and then its reactor pressure vessel. The pressure vessel last week was placed in a specially designed shipping container for transport, arriving Monday at Waste Control Specialists’ privately operated disposal site in Andrews County, Texas.
Since cleanup work began, the Army Corps has sent more than 850,000 pounds of radioactive components from the STURGIS to Waste Control Specialists for permanent disposition. That material represented more than 98 percent of the barge’s radioactivity.
The reactor containment vessel, as the name states, held the STURGIS’ pressure vessel and other reactor parts. The reactor pressure vessel itself encompassed the reactor core and “was the primary source of the radioactivity remaining on the STURGIS.,” Army Corps spokesman Chris Gardner said by email Thursday.
Next up in the project is extraction, packing, and shipment of the final contaminated material in the vessel. “At this time, we are assessing the possibility to leave the remaining portions of the reactor containment vessel,” Gardner wrote. “A radiological release survey will be done to ensure this is feasible. It will then be processed as scrap metal by the shipbreaker” in Brownsville, Texas.
The decommissioning phase of the project is due for completion next spring, Gardner said.
The Army Corps in April acknowledged that project completion had been delayed again, from summer 2018 to summer 2019. The full cost for decommissioning has also increased to about $67 million, from the previously projected $51.5 million.
Both the schedule delay and cost spikes are linked to challenges that developed during the project, officials have said, including gaining access to the reactor containment vessel.
CB&I Federal Services LLC is the contractor for the decommissioning, dismantlement, and disposal operation.
