Amentum, the Maryland-based successor to AECOM’s Management Services branch, announced a pair of executive promotions this week.
Tom Foster, president and project manager at the Savannah River Remediation joint venture in South Carolina, on Wednesday was named chief operating officer for Amentum’s Nuclear & Environment business unit.
On Thursday, the company said it is promoting Philip Breidenbach to replace Foster at the helm of the SRR vendor team in charge of managing liquid waste at the Savannah River Site. Both changes are effective March 1.
Foster has more than 35 years of experience in the nuclear industry, from decommissioning to operations, according to a company press release. He has led Savannah River Remediation since March 2016. Prior to SRR, Foster worked as chief decommissioning officer at the Sellafield nuclear site in the United Kingdom.
As Amentum COO for the Nuclear and Environment business, Foster will oversee Energy Department contracts in high-level radioactive waste management, demolition, and remediation at Cold War nuclear facilities in the U.S. and similar operations in Asia, Canada, and Europe.
“Tom has an excellent domestic and international reputation in the nuclear and waste management business. His accomplishments at the U.S. DOE’s Savannah River and Hanford sites and the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site indicate his exceptional pedigree for this important role in our company,” Amentum CEO John Vollmer said in the release.
Formed in January when two New York investment firms completed their purchase of the former AECOM government contracting business, Amentum does not currently list a nuclear-business COO on the management section of its website.
Breidenbach is a former head of the prime contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The former AECOM unit is the lead partner in NWP.
“Phil is the perfect choice for this assignment,” Mark Whitney, executive vice president and general manager of Amentum’s Nuclear & Environment unit, said in a Thursday press release. Breidenbach has worked for 30 years in the DOE weapons complex, including about 20 at the Savannah River Site.
About 35 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste are held in 43 underground tanks at the Savannah River Site, a byproduct of decades of nuclear weapons production. Breidenbach will oversee all activities for the liquid waste facilities at SRS, including removing waste from underground tanks and filling them with a cement-like grout.
Breidenbach was most recently SRR’s chief engineer from April 2018. From April 2015 through June 2017, he was president of Nuclear Waste Partnership, the vendor in charge of WIPP, according his LinkedIn profile. He then spent a year as an AECOM management services vice president working on special projects.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering whether to establish regulations for resurrecting commercial nuclear power reactors after they have been retired and shifted into decommissioning.
On Tuesday, agency staff conducted a webinar to take feedback on the concept proposed by a private citizen, George Berka of Waterbury, Conn.
In December 2018, the NRC received the petition to set regulations to enable a reactor scheduled for decommissioning to resume operations, and to create a “deferred” status that would enable a plant that has been mothballed for up to 21 years to be resurrected to produce electricity.
In his petition, Berka pointed to reactors being carbon-free sources of electricity, which help combat climate change.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a host of regulations for the operation of nuclear power plants. It is also developing rules intended to specifically address reactors making the transition from operations to decommissioning.
To date, the industry regulator is determining whether to proceed with a rulemaking, and has not begun developing any actual regulations. A decision on the petition would be announced in the Federal Register. The agency said there is no schedule for such a decision.
No U.S. nuclear reactor owners have ever proposed to return a retired nuclear plant to operations, Nicole Fields, rulemaking project manager for the NRC, said during the webinar. Eight nuclear reactors are currently undergoing active decommissioning, through which radioactivity levels must be reduced to the level where their federal license can be terminated and the property released for restricted or unrestricted use. Another 15 are in safe storage, or SAFSTOR, mode, uncer which final decommissioning can be delayed for up to 60 years from closure.
Representatives from the advocacy groups Beyond Nuclear, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Don’t Waste Michigan voiced concerns about the concept, worried that a dormant reactor could be resurrected without public input.
Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, speculated that a reactor owner could shut down a reactor for 20 years and then restart it without any hurdles. He wondered if trained operators would be available after a 20-year retirement.
“The plants that go into decommissioning are degrading. … Why bring them back?” said Michael Keegan with Don’t Waste Michigan.
From The Wires
From Cleveland.com: Nuclear power provider FirstEnergy Solutions exits bankruptcy as Energy Harbor.
From the Carlsbad Current-Argus: New Mexico Legislature session ends without vote on measure opposing interim storage of radioactive waste in the state.
