Fluor Idaho Officially Takes Over Idaho Cleanup

Fluor Idaho’s five-year, $1.4-billion contract to clean up the Department of Energy’s Idaho Site officially began Wednesday, with the now-former incumbents turning over the keys to the weapons complex’s largest backlog of transuranic waste.

DOE announced in February that Fluor won the ICP Core contract, which combines cleanup work previously handled by CH2M-WG Idaho, a partnership between CH2M and AECOM, and Idaho Treatment Group, which includes BWX Technologies, AECOM, and EnergySolutions.

CH2M-WG managed most cleanup work at the site, the byproducts of work with experimental nuclear reactors and a fuel reprocessing facility, while Idaho Treatment Group handled the oft-challenging Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project — a sort of shipping and handling facility for the contaminated equipment and material known as transuranic waste.

“We look forward to helping DOE meet its cleanup mission at the Idaho site, building on the momentum that the incumbent employees have already created, and serving the communities where our employees live,” Fred Hughes, president and program manager for Fluor Idaho, said in a Wednesday press release.

Many of those employees — some 1,700, according to Fluor Idaho’s press release — were formerly with DOE’s previous cleanup contractors on site, the Idaho Treatment Group and CH2M‐WG Idaho.

On the BWXT side of the house, David Richardson, now-former Idaho Treatment Group president, will remain with BWXT as chief operating officer for the Technical Services Group. The company remains interested in partnering for more work across the DOE complex, a spokesperson said Tuesday.

“We are also keeping our eyes on a number of current and future proposal options that align with our core strengths and capabilities,” a BWXT spokesperson said.

Idaho houses more transuranic waste than any other site managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. The waste has been piling up there since 2014, when an accidental underground radiation release and unrelated underground fire shut down the only U.S. disposal site for such material, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.