Savannah River Remediation, the outgoing, Amentum-led liquid waste contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, took home about $43.8 million, or 98%, of a potential $44.6 million fee during fiscal 2021, according to a scorecard released by the agency this week.
Savannah River Remediation (SRR), which includes Amentum, Bechtel, Jacobs and BWX Technologies, won $4.1 million, or 91%, for its subjective performance and $39.6 million, or almost 99%, for its objective goals, according to the scorecard for the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30.
SRR’s liquid waste contract, which began in July 2009, is now valued at $7.5 billion. The company was scheduled to hand over the assignment to the new team, the BWX Technologies-led Savannah River Mission Completion team, at the end of February.
DOE also said in the scorecard that SRR laid the groundwork for the new liquid waste contractor to take over operation of the Parsons-built Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) this spring. Parsons has been operating the facility, which is a crucial component of DOE’s plans to solidify liquid waste left over from Cold War plutonium production.
SRR also got credit for building Saltstone Disposal Unit 7, which is expected to start operating this spring. These massive units are the final resting places for the less-radioactive waste leftover from solidifying liquid waste from the site’s tanks.
The contractor also completed an effort to include dissolved spent nuclear fuel from H Canyon in a sludge batch solidified into glass at the site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility, the site’s main vitrification plant and the heart of the effort to clean up the former plutonium production campus.
SRR’s COVID-19 vaccine incentive program was deemed successful by DOE as the contractor had 79% of its employees fully vaccinated by Sept. 30.
On the other hand, the number of worker safety incidents as well as the lack of progress in the Tank Closure Cesium Removal demonstration project on salt waste at the Savannah River Site were identified as “areas for improvement” for liquid waste operations.
After replacing a High Level Waste Tank pump and ensuring the waste material in Tank 9 was properly prepared, crews restarted the Tank Closure Cesium Removal (TCCR) project Jan. 13, an SRR spokesperson said in a Thursday email. It had not run since August 2020.
“Since the resumption of operations this month, TCCR has processed an additional 40,000 gallons of waste during its first week of operations,” the SRR spokesperson said. Between January 2019 and August 2020, TCCR decontaminated nearly 300,000 gallons of salt waste.
