The top boss for the Department of Energy’s prime contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina said this week he expects to see draft plans soon detailing how the National Nuclear Security Administration will take control of the complex from the DOE Office of Environmental Management.
“The transition planning is well underway,” Stuart MacVean, president and CEO of Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, told the Nuclear Advisory Council meeting Wednesday. “I’m actually expecting to see a draft of the transition plan by the end of this month.” The advisory panel reports to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R).
The planning document, which involves more than a dozen Office of Environmental Management and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) subgroups, should go up to DOE headquarters in June, he added.
Both MacVean and Edwin Deshong, Environmental Management’s No. 2 official at the 310-square-mile complex, said the handover makes sense for DOE. Last year marked a transition where NNSA “paid more for work” at the Savannah River Site than did the cleanup office, Deshong said.
This trend is expected to accelerate in coming years as the nuclear remediation office gradually winds down its liquid waste management program and NNSA ramps up its planned plutonium pit production at Savannah River, Deshong said.
“We are kind of working ourselves out of a job,” Deshong said. As a result, in fiscal 2025 Environmental Management will officially become the tenant and NNSA the landlord, Deshong added. “They will get the calls from regulators in the middle of the night … it’s that sort of thing.,” he said. He reiterated that no job losses are anticipated and Savannah River continues to have plenty of job openings.
Savannah River Site officials told the governor’s nuclear advisory panel that the transition, which will be official in fiscal 2025, will be gradual over a number of years.
Environmental Management senior adviser William (Ike) White and NNSA’s principal deputy administrator Frank Rose visited the Savannah River Site and discussed the planned handover Feb. 2. Since then a top manager at the DOE cleanup office working with the transition, acting policy affairs head Randall Hendrickson, revealed plans to leave DOE later this month for private industry.
