The new Amentum-led cleanup contractor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee will be taking over transuranic waste operations at the property from North Wind Group later this year, an agency spokesperson confirmed this week.
Transition to United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) from North Wind was to begin at the end of August and to be completed when the incumbent’s Transuranic Waste Processing Center contract expires in October, a DOE spokesperson said in an email Wednesday.
North Wind Solutions’s contract, valued at $291 million, began in October 2015 and is set to expire Oct. 26, according to a DOE website updated this week.
Over the course of its contract, North Wind has certified over 98% of Oak Ridge’s inventory of legacy transuranic debris waste for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the DOE spokesperson said. “UCOR will complete the small amount of remaining, technically challenging waste and eventually demolish the facility,” the spokesperson said.
Managers of the Department of Energy’s Waste isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., expect to have the hoist in the Air Intake Shaft back operating next month, a spokesperson said this week.
The hoist had been offline since an inspection on March 22 and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a report dated July 8 that it remained out of service. The hoist is down due to a malfunction of a card in the controller that manages the hoist, according to the board’s report.
“The system was originally going to be repaired, however, the decision was made to upgrade to a wireless system,” a WIPP spokesperson said in a Wednesday email. Installation of the new system is scheduled for September.
The temporary loss of the hoist does not have an immediate impact on waste disposal and related work underground at the salt mine run by Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, the WIPP spokesperson said.. However, safety rules could cause WIPP to suspend underground work if one of the other two hoists, the waste hoist or the salt hoist, have trouble before then, according to the board report.
“For safety reasons, WIPP requires two serviceable hoists when accessing and performing activities in the underground,” according to the board’s report. “This precludes underground operations during scheduled or other maintenance activities on either the Waste or Salt Hoists.”
