A former head of the prime contractor for the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, Philip Breidenbach, will lead the vendor team in charge of managing liquid waste at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Amentum, the successor to AECOM’s government contracting branch, announced Thursday that Breidenbach will replace Tom Foster as the president and project manager of Savannah River Remediation. Amentum this week named Foster as the chief operating officer of its Nuclear & Environment business unit.
The changes are effective March 1.
“Phil is the perfect choice for this assignment,” said Mark Whitney, executive vice president and general manager of Amentum’s Nuclear & Environment unit, said in a press release. Breidenbach has spent 30 years working in the DOE weapons complex, including about 20 at the Savannah River Site.
There is about 35 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste held in 43 underground tanks at the Savannah River Site, a byproduct of decades of nuclear weapons work. 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.
Amentum was created in January when two New York investment firms completed their purchase of the former AECOM government contracting business.
