WC Monitor
1/29/2016
Fluor Marks First Paducah Demolition of 2016
Department of Energy contractor Fluor Paducah Deactivation Project already in 2016 has demolished the first of 12 inactive facilities to be razed soon at the former gaseous diffusion plant near Paducah, Ky., the DOE Office of Environmental Management Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office announced Tuesday.
The C-746-B warehouse Fluor Paducah just knocked down is one of a dozen facilities slated for demolition in the “the coming months,” DOE said. The 72,000-square-foot warehouse, which dates to the 1960s, stored construction and factory equipment. Hazardous metals waste and polychlorinated biphenyl, a now-illegal substance once used as an industrial coolant, were removed from the warehouse prior to demolition for shipment to an off-site disposal facility, DOE said.
“Fluor began mobilization on Nov. 2, 2015,” DOE PPPO spokesman Brad Mitzelfelt said. “They had the building demolished, downsized, and packaged by Dec. 9, 2015.”
Under a three-year, $420-million DOE task order awarded in 2014 after privately operated enrichment ceased at the plant, Fluor Paducah has already demolished 32 buildings, the agency said. The team, led by Fluor of Oshkosh, Wis., also includes Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. of the Netherlands and Los Alamos Technical Associates of Albuquerque, N.M.
Cleanup at Paducah will run through 2047, according to the White House’s 2016 budget request, over which span DOE must arrange for demolition of some 500 buildings on just over one square mile of land.
Portsmouth D&D Contractor Marks Safety Milestone
Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, prime contractor on the decontamination and decommissioning project at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, said on Tuesday that it had marked 2 million safe work hours.
The safety run began in August 2015, according to a press release. Safe work hours are “hours without a lost-time accident,” Fluor-BWXT said. There are 1,900 workers and subcontractors on the Portsmouth cleanup, which includes radiological, chemical, and industrial hazards.
The roughly 70-year-old Portsmouth Site, located about 100 miles south of Columbus, Ohio, produced weapon-grade uranium for the Pentagon and later refined fuel for commercial reactors.
Fluor-BWXT is a partnership of engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. of Irving, Texas, and nuclear power company BWX Technologies of Charlotte, N.C. The base period on the group’s roughly $1.1 billion Portsmouth cleanup contract with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management is set to expire on March 28. DOE holds a five-year option worth nearly $720 million.
