SUMMERLIN, NEV. — The existing low-level hazardous waste landfill at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is likely to hit capacity before its replacement is ready in 2029, a manager with prime contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge said here Thursday.
There are probably about five more years left on the existing Environmental Management Waste Management Facility, which is now about 85% full, John Wrapp, waste program manager, at United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), said at the annual Radwaste Summit, hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications.
“You can see we are going to fill up before we have the new cell complete,” Wrapp said. The UCOR official did not detail how the contractor plans to work around this gap in on-site waste disposal ability.
As Wrapp spoke this week, the state of Tennessee was wrapping up a public comment period about the new Environmental Management Disposal Facility.
The latest incarnation of UCOR, a partnership of Amentum, Jacobs, and Honeywell, started work on its new long-term environmental contract at Oak Ridge last month. The pact is worth $8.3-billion over 10 years, with options. The prior UCOR, which had the Oak Ridge business since 2011, was an Amentum-Jacobs partnership.
The new UCOR’s contract is an indefinite quantity/indefinite delivery task order agreement under DOE’s End State Contracting Model, with a 10-year ordering period plus five years on the back end to complete any task orders DOE gives the team during the first decade of the deal.
The Office of Environmental Management has issued six such end-state contracts so far: at the Hanford Site in Washington state; the Idaho National Laboratory; the Nevada National Security Site; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; the Moab Site in Utah; and Oak Ridge, said Angela Watmore, the acting head of acquisition and project management, who addressed the RadWaste Summit remotely.
