The liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina hired 151 new employees with an average age of 37 during fiscal 2020.
As a result, the average age of the 2,600-person workforce at Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is 48-years old, Phil Breidenbach, president & project manager of the joint venture said during an early-morning Zoom presentation Wednesday. Breidenbach made his comments to the local Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness group in South Carolina.
Nearly a third of the workers are approaching age 60 and “starting to think about retirement,” Breidenbach said.
The new hires in the past year included 59 engineers and 37 production operators, said Breidenbach. This hiring pace is expected to continue for several years, he added.
In addition to Amentum, other partners in SRR are Bechtel, Jacobs and BWX Technologies. Key subcontractors include Orano and Atkins.
The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management last month announced plans to extend SRR’s tenure at least through Sept. 30, 2021, with three additional four-month option periods that could keep the incumbent around through September 2022. The agency also just issued a request for proposals for a new long-term contract for the liquid waste work and operation of the recently-completed Salt Waste Processing Facility at Savannah River.
“2020 sent us a lot of curve balls,” Breidenbach said. “The biggest curve was COVID-19.” When the Savannah River Site, like most other DOE nuclear cleanup properties, cut back to reduced staffing in March due to the pandemic, SRR was able to quickly convert 40% of its workforce to telework, he said.
Savannah River Remediation is now planning a phased approach to bringing many of those remote workers back inside the fence, said Breidenbach. “We’re a team” and want to work together as much as possible, he said.
Working on-site during the days of COVID-19 means temperature checks, mandatory mask use, physical distancing, increased use of fans and ventilation and other precautions, Breidenbach said.
During the presentation, Breidenbach praised Parsons for its completion of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, and said SRR moved the first 4,000 gallons of low-radioactive salt waste to the new plant this week. Parsons will continue hot commissioning of the facility over the next three to four months, with full operations starting in early 2021.
Savannah River Remediation continues to build 32-million-gallon saltstone disposal units needed for SWPF operations. The disposal units stand 43 feet high and are 375 feet in diameter. Saltstone Disposal Unit 7, the second mega-vault, is under construction and scheduled to be ready for operations by the spring of 2022. Work continues on Units 8 and 9.
Eventually, there could be a dozen saltstone disposal units at the Savannah River Site, the SRR executive said. There are currently six.
On other waste issues, Breidenbach said “double-stacking” of radioactive canisters has been a success because it can eliminate the need for building a second $100-million glass-waste storage building. Since the first canister was double-stacked in August 2016 in one storage building, over 1,000 canisters have been double stacked.
In 2019, Savannah River Remediation started operation of a tank closure cesium removal demonstration project designed to accelerate removal of radioactive waste from Savannah River Site underground tanks.
