The liquid waste contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina hired 250 new employees in fiscal 2019 as part of ongoing efforts to offset the loss of employees due to retirement and attrition.
Savannah River Remediation (SRR) said in its annual report this week that the hiring increase was needed to support ramping up of the site’s radioactive salt waste treatment. That includes startup of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), which will treat millions of gallons of Cold War-era radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks at the U.S. Energy Department site near Aiken, S.C.
Released Tuesday, the annual report highlights various accomplishments during the federal budget year that ended on Sept. 30. They include milestones on specific missions, statewide and DOE safety awards, and ushering in a younger workforce that can carry out its various projects.
The 250 new hires have filled jobs in several fields, including engineering, electrical and mechanical maintenance, safety, and radiological protection. The average of age of the contractor’s current workforce is 48, six years younger than it was in 2009 when SRR inked an eight-year, $5 billion deal for liquid waste management at Savannah River.
The contractor did not respond by deadline Friday to a query regarding how many of the new hires were replacing workers who left during fiscal 19, hiring projections for fiscal 2020, and the current size of the SRR workforce.
The report also offers an update on the construction of Salt Waste Disposal Unit (SDU) 7, a 32-million-gallon megavolume concrete structure that will permanently house radioactive salt waste once it has been processed at the Salt Waste Processing Facility. Built by Parsons, the $2.3 billion facility is due to begin waste treatment operations in the first quarter of 2020, more than a year after the initial goal of December 2018, but ahead of the January 2021 startup deadline.
Savannah River Remediation said it cleared space for SDU 7 in the fiscal year by relocating more than 170,000 cubic yards of soil. Construction is ongoing and the unit is expected to be ready for use in 2022. The contractor in June broke ground on two more mega-units that will be ready for use after SDU 7. Units currently in use include storage Vaults 1 and 4, along with SDUs 2, 3, and 5. Each of the three units consists of two tanks, all able to hold up to 2.9 million gallons of waste. Finally, SDU 6 is currently in use as the first mega-volume at SRS.
All told, the Savannah River Site houses more than 35 million gallons of radioactive waste in more than 40 tanks, with salt waste accounting for 90 percent and sludge waste the other 10 percent. The salt waste was first processed via a pilot system that was shut down earlier this year so SWPF could be integrated into the liquid waste system. Since 1996, sludge waste has been processed through the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) and is temporarily stored on-site as the federal government works to find a permanent repository location.
Savannah River Remediation is a partnership of AECOM, Bechtel National, CH2M, and BWX Technologies. Since its original award ended in June 2017, SRR’s contract has been extended four times, including the 18-month extension signed in April that keeps the company on the job through September 30, 2020. The latest contract is worth $750 million.
The Energy Department in October 2017 awarded a new contract to Savannah River EcoManagement, a joint venture of BWXT Technical Services Group, Bechtel National, and Honeywell International. However, the Government Accountability Office in February 2018 upheld a protest by one of the other bidding teams, prompting DOE to retract the contract award and eventually to cancel that procurement entirely. There has been no official word on when the agency will issue a new request for proposals, but DOE is expected to secure a new follow-on deal before SRR’s contract expires.