BWX Technologies President and CEO Rex Geveden sounded confident Wednesday that a partnership led by his company will retain a 10-year contract for liquid waste management at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina – even after the Government Accountability Office upheld a competitors’ protest against the deal.
In a redacted version of its Feb. 8 decision, the GAO said the Energy Department had not done enough to verify the technical approach, put forward by BWXT with partners Bechtel and Honeywell, would work. The Savannah River Site has stored 36 million gallons of radioactive nuclear waste in 43 underground tanks. The bid protest argued the BWXT-led group would significantly depart from prior practices when it comes to the “concentration” of the waste while it is being processed.
The CEO of the Lynchburg, Va., -based company broached the issue during a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts.
BWXT’s “Nuclear Services [Group] has been awarded more than $8 billion in contract value over the past year, and while the protest for the $4.7 billion Savannah River liquid waste contract is still pending, we are working with our customer through the process in order to resolve as quickly as possible so that transition work can begin,” the CEO said.
Geveden did not elaborate on the matter, and none of the financial analysts asked him about it during the call. The Energy Department has declined to reveal, so far, what action it will take following the GAO decision. The auditing agency has said DOE should, at a minimum, ensure the winner’s technical approach actually works.
The Nuclear Services Group, which includes BWXT’s business with the DOE Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, is experiencing “a resurgence,” Geveden said.
NSG manages complex environmental projects for the U.S. government and the commercial nuclear sector. BWXT is a partner in the AECOM-led Nuclear Waste Partnership, which is the prime for DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
