The environmental remediation contractor for the Department of Energy’s West Valley Demonstration Project in upstate New York earned “very good” ratings in all four categories of its latest performance evaluation. That was a slight dip from the previous evaluation but enough to earn CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley (CHBWV) a $360,000 award fee, 80 percent of the total available $450,694 for the performance period from March 1, 2016, to Aug. 28, 2016.
CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley is tasked with cleanup of the former spent fuel reprocessing site under a nearly nine-year, $525 million contract due to expire on March 9, 2020. Its work includes relocation of solidified high-level waste; deactivation and demolition of facilities at the site; and disposal of lower-level waste, including debris and protective apparel.
The company was graded for safety, health, and quality management; business management; project management; and environmental and regulatory strategy. “The Contractor met the majority of performance goals and objectives for the period,” according to the scorecard, which said CHBWV had neither significant achievements nor significant deficiencies during the nearly six-month stretch.
In the safety category, the contractor reached more than 2.1 million safe work hours and 1,400 days without a lost time injury or illness, according to the evaluation. Other areas of progress included positive evaluations of current safety activities, along with ongoing upgrades to the emergency management and security programs.
Conversely, CHBWV was not consistent in employing “lower threshold indicators” in determining and addressing possible dangers, DOE said. The contractor faced a number of events in which workers appeared to lose focus on their tasks, according to the evaluation. While the contractor reviewed and took steps to address the situation, including refresher training for workers, “DOE also observed several occasions where CHBWV’s reactions to incidents were not as rigorous or thorough as DOE has come to expect from what has otherwise been an excellent safety program.”
The report did not cite any similar problems in the other performance categories, where DOE lauded its contractor for exceeding the department’s strategic sourcing goals for fiscal 2016 in the business management area, strong planning and problem solving under project management, and “very strong” liaising with regulators and stakeholders under environmental and regulatory strategy.
“We are pleased that our customer, DOE-WVDP, recognized the accomplishments of the CHBWV workforce in 2016,” CH2M spokeswoman Lynette Bennett said by email Thursday. She did not respond to questions regarding details of the DOE evaluation in the safety, health, and quality management category.
The communications office for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management did not respond to a request for comment.
In its prior evaluation, covering Aug. 29, 2015, to Feb. 29, 2016, CHBWV earned a rating of “excellent” for safety, health, and quality management, and “very good” grades for the other three categories. It took home $250,000, 84 percent of the potential $295,495 award fee.
West Valley was the sole U.S. site for reprocessing spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors, with Nuclear Fuel Services offering the service from 1966 to 1972. The facility has been a designated cleanup site since 1980, with waste vitrification conducted from 1996 to 2002.
Bennett confirmed Thursday that all three components of contaminated vitrification equipment had been shipped to the Waste Control Specialists storage complex in West Texas. The first shipment was made in October.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article described Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., the former spent nuclear fuel reprocessor at what is now the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, as defunct. The business continues to operate as a BWX Technologies subsidiary that produces nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy.
