WC Monitor
4/10/2015
IN CONGRESS
The Congressional Nuclear Cleanup Caucus will hold its second meeting of the year on April 15 with a panel of Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management officials focusing on “progress through partnership.” The meeting, to be held in Room 2325 of the Rayburn House Office Building from 5:00 pm. to 6:30 p.m., will be led by Caucus Chair Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) and Co-Chair Rep Ben Lujan (D-N.M.). The panel discussion will include acting Assistant EM Secretary Mark Whitney, Oak Ridge Environmental Management Manager Sue Cange, DOE Richland Operations Office Manager Stacy Charboneau, EM Consolidated Business Center Director Jack Craig, Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office Manager Bill Murphie, DOE Idaho Cleanup Project Deputy Manager Jack Zimmerman and representatives from the Energy Technology and Environmental Business Association (ETEBA).
IN DOE
The Department of Energy is scheduled to hold industry days April 28-29 for the procurement for a new contract to manage DOE’s two depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion (DUF6) plants. On April 28, DOE plans to hold a pre-proposal conference and a site tour of the DUF6 plant located at the Portsmouth site. On April 29, DOE plans to hold one-on-one meetings with potential bidders. More information on the industry days can be found here.
Potential bidders on the new contract to manage Nuclear Regulatory Commission-licensed facilities at the Department of Energy’s Idaho site and in Colorado now have an additional week to submit questions concerning the recently issued final Request for Proposals. Questions are now due by April 17, instead of April 10, under an amendment to the RFP issued yesterday. The new contract, which is being set aside for small businesses meeting a $38.5 million size standard, would cover work at the Fort St. Vrain facility in Colorado; the Three Mile Island-2 Independent Spent Fuel Storage facility at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC) in Idaho; and the Idaho Spent Fuel Facility (ISFF) license. Bids are still currently due by April 30.
The chairs of the various DOE Office of Environmental Management Citizens Advisory Boards are scheduled to meet April 22-23 in Augusta, Ga. The meeting is scheduled to involve discussions on several topics, including EM’s budget, waste disposition and safety culture, among other topics, according to a notice posted in the Federal Register this week.
IN THE INDUSTRY
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the managing contractor for the Savannah River Site, reached 10 million hours without a lost work day case last month, the contractor announced this week. The milestone, reached on March 15, has been accumulated since 2013. SRNS had previously reached a 24.8 million hour milestone between 2008 and 2013. “It takes a lot of attention to detail and focus on safe behaviors for our employees to perform hazardous work safely and achieve such a significant accomplishment. Most impressively, when the unlikely event of an injury does occur, our employees come back stronger than ever and look for opportunities to prevent recurrence,” Alice Doswell, SRNS Senior Vice President for Environmental Services, Safety and Health, said in a statement. “It is that resilience and commitment to safe performance that enables SRNS to have a world class safety culture.”
