The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last month achieved another milestone in decommissioning of the radiologically contaminated STURGIS barge, but the schedule for completing the project has been pushed back to summer 2019. The cost of the work has also spiked by up to $12 million.
The Army is dismantling and decommissioning the former World War II Liberty Ship that was fitted with a nuclear reactor that powered U.S. military and civilian operations in the Panama Canal in the 1960s and 1970s. The vessel in 2015 was towed roughly 1,700 miles from Virginia to the Port of Galveston in Texas for the work.
Workers by mid-March had cut off the top section of the STURGIS’ reactor containment vessel, according to a project update issued Wednesday. The next step in the project is extracting sizable parts from the containment vessel itself, wrote Brenda Barber, project manager for the Environmental and Munitions Design Center in the Army Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District.
The Army Corps expects this fall to complete several milestones: removal of all large components associated with the reactor system, complete radiological decontamination of the STURGIS, and release of the vessel to a shipbreaking facility in Brownsville, Texas. Work will shift to that plant next winter, and the vessel will eventually be recycled for scrap.
In May 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers said it would take an additional year, to fall 2017, to complete radiological decommissioning of the STURGIS. That is now expected to occur next winter, Barber said. Anticipated project completion has also been pushed back from summer 2018 to the following summer.
The further delays were caused by challenges in gaining access to the reactor containment vessel, Barber told RadWaste Monitor by email. “Our biggest struggle was removing the canopy over the Reactor Containment Vessel,” she stated. “The canopy was built in place when STURGIS was commissioned and it was never designed to be removed. The team engineered a solution to remove it which involved cutting it into manageable sections, but it took much longer than anticipated.”
With the canopy removed, and workers accessing the reactor containment vessel, the Army Corps has greater confidence in the updated completion schedule, Barber wrote.
The trouble with the reactor vessel canopy and costs associated with the schedule delay – for example, additional spending on the work site and personnel — have also pushed the total cost for the decommissioning up by about $8 million to $12 million from a previously projected $51.5 million, Barber said. The Army Corps has secured the funding needed to finish work, she added.
The decommissioning project has to date sent 35 shipments encompassing 640,000 pounds of waste to the Waste Control Specialists storage complex in Andrews County, Texas, the Army Corps update says. Additional shipments are planned in coming months.
