The Energy Department believes it will take at least until next summer to finish demolition of the two primary buildings at the Separations Process Research Unit in upstate New York, where the agency remains mired in a business dispute with its prime demolition contractor.
The two main buildings at the experimental Cold War-era plutonium-production plant, H2 and G2, were once intended to be torn down by 2011, but contamination incidents in 2010 and weather-related damage to the site in 2011 from Hurricane Irene made that impossible.
Demolition started on building G2 in July, but demolition of H2 and its underground tank vaults will wait until later this year.
“H2 and the H2 Tank Vaults are in the final stages of preparation for start of demolition which is scheduled to commence this fall,” DOE spokeswoman Paivi Nettamo wrote in a Tuesday email. “Building demolition is estimated to complete next summer. There may be some additional effort required to remediate soil underneath the building following the demolition.”
Meanwhile, DOE and AECOM, which inherited the SPRU work when it purchased URS in 2014, are still embroiled in a contract dispute over demolition costs.
The agency on Aug. 15 gave contract resolutions firm C2G International a contract worth up to $2.3 million over three years, including options, to “assist DOE in evaluating and resolving contract claims, review previously submitted Requests for Equitable Adjustments and Proposals, assist with the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process and assist with drafting Expert reports to cover critical path delays and construction in support of the DOE Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) field office.”
AECOM’s nine-year SPRU deactivation, demolition, and removal contract is worth $145.8-million and expires on Dec. 21, about six months sooner that DOE thinks demolition will be finished.
The contract has become an albatross for the Los Angeles-based company, which last year estimated SPRU demolition could cost close to $400 million. The damage from the hurricane has already forced AECOM to pay for some SPRU work out of its own pocket, which prompted the company in 2014 to file a roughly $100 million claim with DOE to recoup these costs, which were outside the scope of the 2011 contract modification URS received after the 2010 radiation incident. In 2007, when it awarded the work to URS, DOE thought SPRU demolition would take four years to finish and cost $67-million.
