The Jacobs-led company in charge of cleanup of the former gaseous diffusion plant at the U.S. Energy Department’s Paducah Site in Kentucky has selected a new top executive.
Myrna Redfield, who has about 30 years experience in environmental management, was named president and CEO/project manager at Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership on Aug. 29, the joint venture said in a Tuesday press release. She succeeds the recently retired Jeff Bradford.
Redfield was previously deputy project manager and chief operating officer at Four Rivers, according to a brief profile on LinkedIn. The deputy manager/COO post is now held by Dan Coyne, according to the Four Rivers website.
In addition to having served as director of integration and strategic partnering at Four Rivers, Redfield has worked on other major DOE contracts in the past, the press release says.
Along with site remediation, Redfield will be in charge of an 840-person workforce and interacting with two labor unions. “Myrna has performed in roles of increasing responsibility, including more than 25 years of Paducah-specific experience,” Four Rivers Board Chairwoman Karen Wiemelt said in the release.
The news was reported Tuesday by WKMS-FM, a public radio station for Murray State University in Murray, Ky., about 50 miles from Paducah.
Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership has a potential 10-year, $1.5 billion contract for deactivation and remediation at Paducah that could extend into late June 2027 if all options are exercised. The vendor is still in its initial five-year base period. The partnership is comprised of Jacobs, Fluor, and BWX Technologies.
Parsons carried out four proficiency drills between July and September at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), which is expected to open in December at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina
The contractor in charge of building and starting up the plant plans five more drills, including emergency drills, through November, according to a weekly site report filed Sept. 20 by staff at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). Two Parsons management teams devoted to operational readiness were to observe an Oct. 3 drill at the site.
The DNFSB document did not provide details regarding what the drills entailed.
Parsons signed a $2 billion contract with DOE in 2002 to design, build, test, and start up the processing facility no later than January 2021. Construction was completed in June 2016, and Parsons began testing and commissioning.
Parsons has yet to deliver a corrective action plan to the Energy Department to address shortcomings in the emergency management system, after the agency found a draft plan unsatisfactory because it lacked adequate detail about fixing problems.
In a Sept. 6 report, the DNFSB said past emergency drills showed deficiencies in areas including radiation control, command post and incident scene coordination, and coordination with fire department.
Parsons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Savannah River Site is home to more than 35 million gallons of radioactive waste left by nuclear-weapon work during the Cold War. The $2.3 billion, 140,000-square-foot Salt Waste Processing Facility should process roughly 30 million gallons of radioactive salt waste stored in decades-old underground tanks. The new facility will remove cesium from the salt waste and transfer the remaining salt solution to Salt Disposal Units.
The Energy Department and Parsons initially wanted the SWPF to start operating in 2018, but the plant is still ahead of the contracted January 2021 deadline.
AECOM-led site waste contractor Savannah River Remediation, in a plan issued earlier this year, predicted a May 2020 startup for the SWPF.
Deadline slippage and readiness of the plant have been a source of dispute between Parsons and the Energy Department.
