The contractor that manages the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico will have new leadership starting next month.
Sean Dunagan will succeed Bruce Covert as president and project manager for AECOM-led Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), according to an announcement Tuesday. He will begin with a two-week transition alongside Covert starting Aug. 29. Covert’s last day is Sept. 13, according to NWP spokesman Donavan Mager.
Mager said he could not discuss details of the selection process. “This is company proprietary information, so we cannot discuss the hiring process,” he wrote in a Wednesday email.
Dunagan already has an extensive history with WIPP, the underground disposal facility for the Energy Department’s transuranic waste. He served as senior recovery manager from December 2014 to April 2017, following the February 2014 radiation release that closed the site to waste emplacement for nearly three years, according to Dunagan’s LinkedIn profile. That included an 11-month stint as acting deputy manager, from February to December 2016.
Dunagan was most recently a manager for research and development, science, and engineering in special projects and remote site support the Sandia National Laboratories’ Carlsbad location.
“In this capacity, he led the team working on development of the WIPP 3D Performance Assessment effort, which will enable long-term regulatory success,” according to Tuesday’s release. “Other responsibilities included ensuring regulatory compliance with 40 CFR 191 and 194 and supervision and responsibility for all facility management activities for SNL-C’s remote site in Carlsbad. Additionally, this included responsibility for strategic planning and budgeting of the long-term plan for all Sandia-WIPP activities.”
Covert will assume a “senior leadership position” at AECOM after more than two years in charge of Nuclear Waste Partnership, the release says. Details are still being finalized, Mager wrote.
Nuclear Waste Partnership, in which AECOM partners with BWX Technologies, has a potential 10-year, $2 billion contract to operate WIPP through September 2022. That would require DOE to approve a second option period by the end of September 2020.
