Current Forecast for Stable Workforce in ‘16
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
3/27/2015
Despite proposed budget cuts in Fiscal Year 2016, the Portsmouth site doesn’t expect workforce impacts if recent increases in uranium prices hold into the next fiscal year. The Department of Energy’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request would provide $167 million for D&D work at Portsmouth, a cut of approximately $49 million from current levels. But the bulk of the funding for Portsmouth cleanup comes from DOE’s uranium barter program, and the spot price for uranium oxide has risen from below $30 last summer to above $40 in recent months. “I’d love to see more money, everybody would like more money, but right now life is good, the barter price is up and life is good at Portsmouth,” Fluor B&W Portsmouth Project Director Dennis Carr said last week at the Waste Management conference in Phoenix. “As long as we can maintain the current sale volume and the price stays up life is good and we get work done.”
Lawmakers and union leaders have questioned DOE’s request for Portsmouth and its potential impacts on the workforce, and a senior Department official has said that the budget could potentially result in a workforce restructuring at the site. However, if uranium prices stay up there will be little workforce impacts, Carr said. “Right now we have a pretty stable workforce through this year and next year’s current forecast is relatively stable,” he said. He added later: “I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell you which way it’s going to go, but I know our appropriators and our Ohio delegation is very aware and they are trying to work it out the best they can. Right now I see stability over the next year-and-a-half.”
Portsmouth Faced Layoffs Last Year
Portsmouth D&D workers faced the threat of significant layoffs last year, when Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, warned that it would have to cut about a third of the site workforce—a total of 675 positions out of the project’s then-workforce of approximately 1,900 employees—heading into FY 2015 because of budgetary concerns. FBP was able to largely avoid such layoffs, though, after lawmakers provided an additional $76.4 million as part of the final FY 2015 appropriations legislation.
DOE May Consider Decreasing Transfers
As DOE prepares a new Secretarial determination to govern future transfers of excess uranium to help fund cleanup work and other activities, DOE may consider decreasing the amount of material to be provided. An analysis prepared this year by Energy Resources International found that lowering DOE’s annual transfers of excess uranium to 1,855 metric tons per year—from the current authorized annual limit of 2,705 metric tons—would result in a $0.90 increase in uranium prices, DOE said. Eliminating altogether the transfers, which have long come under criticism from the uranium industry, would be expected to result in a $2.70 increase in the price of uranium, the Department said. Carr said last week that based on current sales Portsmouth could continue to rely on funding from the uranium transfers through mid-2018.
