The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed design work to separate the north and south ends of the SM-1A deactivated nuclear plant at Fort Greely in Alaska, an incremental step required before starting decommissioning of the site.
Next on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) radar for the impending SM-1A decommissioning effort is an in-person technical project planning meeting scheduled for the end of January, project manager Brenda Barber said in an email update to stakeholders Wednesday afternoon.
At the meeting, stakeholders and regulators will give feedback on the site’s Decommissioning Plan, the Environmental Assessment (EA), and Section 106 Historical Mitigation, which requires federal agencies to consider the impact of their work on federal properties.
USACE plans to start accepting bids for decommissioning next April. The $150 to $200 million decommissioning contract is slated to be awarded by July 2022 with work carried out from fiscal years 2022 to 2028. The public comment period on the site’s draft EA is scheduled to begin in March 2021.
In June, USACE started collecting capability statements from potential vendors to decommission the site.
APTIM Federal Services is the Army Corps’ contractor for engineering design of utility segregation of the disused SM-1A reactor ahead of its decommissioning.
The SM-1A reactor operated for ten years, from 1962 to 1972.
