A permit that will allow Energy Department contractor Bechtel National to build a facility crucial to starting solidification of Cold War-era waste in Washington state by 2022 goes out for public comment next month, the state Ecology Department announced.
“Ecology plans to start a 30-day public comment period in middle October on a proposed new air permit for the Effluent Management Facility (EMF) for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP),” the department wrote in a Sept. 8 email notice. “The EMF supports processing of secondary liquid waste streams generated during low-activity waste melter offgas control system operation. It will also process small amounts of effluent from the Lab radioactive liquid waste disposal system vessels and waste transfer line flushing.”
Permit specifics will be posted online at the department’s website when the document is eligible for public comment next month, Ecology said, adding “no changes to any existing WTP air permits will occur.”
The Effluent Management Facility is the least far along of all the infrastructure required to treat low-level waste at the Hanford Site, the former plutonium production site near the city of Richland. EMF’s construction requires three major modifications to Bechtel National’s permit with the state, the last of which will is set to be submitted to Olympia in fall 2017, Bechtel has said.
WTP will convert Hanford’s 56 million gallons of mostly liquid chemical and radioactive waste — including less-contaminated low-activity waste and more dangerous high-level waste — into more easily storable glass form in a process known as vitrification.
In 2022, DOE will start piping low-activity waste directly into WTP from the site’s waste storage tank farm in a process dubbed direct feed low-activity waste. The agency is legally bound to begin high-level waste treatment by 2036.
Management and operations contracts administered by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) escaped some of the criticism leveled in a new Government Accountability Office report at the more expansive M&O deals used in DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The report, “Department of Energy: Actions Needed to Strengthen Acquisition Planning for Management and Operating Contracts,” was published Aug. 9 and made public Sept. 8.
Broadly speaking, GAO wrote in the report, the NNSA at times did not consider alternatives to the high-value M&O contracts used to manage day-to-day operations at the agency’s active defense nuclear facilities.
Congressional auditors recommended DOE and NNSA “discuss alternatives beyond extending the M&O contract or competing a similar contract, and that DOE establish a process to analyze and apply its experience with contracting alternatives.”
EM, on the other hand, has already split some core work out of legacy management and operations contracts. The office, which oversees defense nuclear cleanup from the Cold War arms race, has only two sites featuring management and operations deals: the Waste Operation Pilot Plant (WIPP) transuranic waste-disposal facility near Carlsbad, N.M.; and the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
GAO cited the current liquid-waste-management contract at the Savannah River Site, which DOE in 2009 awarded to the now-AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation conglomerate. The eight-year, performance-based deal has a maximum value of about $4-billion, including options. Previously, Savannah River cleanup work was managed by Washington Savannah River Co. under a now-lapsed management and operations deal that also included responsibility for the Savannah River National Laboratory and the site’s defense tritium operations.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, led by Fluor of Irving, Texas, holds the current Savannah River Site management and operations contract. The 10-year deal was awarded in 2008 and has a maximum value of nearly $9.5 billion, including options.
The only other management and operations contract in DOE’s legacy nuclear cleanup complex now is the potentially $1.6 billion agreement awarded to another AECOM affiliate, Nuclear Waste Partnership, for operation of WIPP. Including a five-year option, the deal runs to 2022.
For WIPP, “DOE considered using a non-M&O contract, though the M&O contract alternative was selected,” GAO wrote in its report. “Contracting officials indicated in the plan that a non-M&O performance-based contract would not provide for flexibility or integrated site management and operations.”
The Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center on Wednesday released a sources sought/request for information for contractors ready to provide disposal of low-level and mixed-low-level waste (LLW/MLLW).
The work would involve safe transport and disposal of such waste, along with Section 11e.(2) byproduct material; technologically enhanced, naturally occurring radioactive material (TENORM); and sealed sources.
“DOE requests qualified, interested parties to demonstrate that they have, or can timely acquire, the capability and required authorizations, licenses, permits, facilities, personnel, and equipment to accomplish the acceptance, transportation, storage, repackaging, and treatment of DOE wastes,” according to the RFI. This includes development and maintenance of treatment plans, coordination and notification of regulators, and disposition of all residual, byproduct, and secondary wastes.”
The department is not yet taking propoals for the contract, It has also not not yet identified the type or number of contracts to be issued; how long it or they will last; how much funding will be provided; or any set-aside potential for small businesses, disadvantaged small businesses, women-owned small businsses, or other business types.
The EM web page for the procurement say the department expects the North American Industry Classification System code for the need to be 562211. “Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal, and the small business size standard is $38.5 Million.”
The LLW and MLLW disposal services are currently conducted under two separate contracts that expire in April 2018.
Interested parties should submit their capability statements to contract specialist Ian Rexroad, at [email protected], by 5 p.m. EDT on Sept. 30.
Nuclear waste technology disposal technology provider Kurion said this week it has hired an executive with decades of experience working in the Department of Energy nuclear complex.
Billy Morrison will take the position of president of Kurion’s federal services business, managing the Irvine, Calif.-based company’s DOE, Defense Department, and commercial nuclear businesses. He comes from U.K.-based Atkins, where he was executive vice president of Atkins Nuclear North American Group, according to Morrison’s bio on the Energy Facility Contractors Group website. Prior to that, Morrison led the government group of waste management company EnergySolutions, and in 2015-16 helped manage the sale of the group to Atkins.
Morrison is chairman of the EFCOG Board of Directors and has put in more than 30 years in the industry, much of it at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. His positions there included manager of the Site Utilities Department and plant manager of the Solid Waste Management Facility.
Kurion earlier this year was acquired by French environmental solutions company Veolia in a $350 million deal. The U.S. company’s products include robots for working in hazardous environments, a tritium removal system, and vitrification technologies for converting nuclear waste into glass.
BWX Technologies (BWXT) said this week it has appointed James Jaska, Kenneth Krieg, and Barbara Niland, three longtime defense industry leaders, to its Board of Directors as part of the board’s continuing succession planning and refreshment activities.
Jaska is president and managing director of Nova Global Services, an operations and advisory firm. He previously oversaw worldwide operations of AECOM’s government group and held executive roles in the company for over 10 years, the announcement said. He also held leadership positions at Tetra Tech, Honeywell, and other companies.
Krieg, founder of the Samford Global Strategies consulting practice, worked for over 20 years in Defense Department acquisitions, including two years as the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. He previously spent 11 years at International Paper as well as on assignments with the White House, National Security Council staff, and Office of the Secretary of Defense, the announcement said.
Niland served for over five years as vice president of business management and chief financial officer at Huntington Ingalls Industries. She also spent over 30 years with Northrop Grumman and the former Westinghouse Electronics, including as vice president of finance and controller for the company’s electronic systems sector, in addition to being named chief financial officer of the combined Northrop Grumman shipbuilding business in 2008, it said.
