Congress was out and Washington was empty, but that didn’t stop news from breaking during our annual August publication break. As chronicled in the Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, here are a few stories that we’ve been following.
Hanford Tank AY-102 Waste Removal to Resume in October
Hanford Site contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) expects in October to resume removal of waste from a leaky tank at the former Department of Energy plutonium production facility.
The tank farm manager has removed all but the bottom layer of 750,000 gallons of chemical and radioactive waste once held in double-shell Tank AY-102. Roughly 41,000 gallons of sludge remains to be extracted.
Removal stopped in April to allow workers to place four extended-reach sluicers into the tanks — essentially “water cannons” used to break up the remaining waste so it can be pumped out, WRPS spokesman John Britton said by telephone Aug. 15. The fourth sluicer was installed in July, according to a site report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The hose, electrical, and control-cable links are still being completed, according to Britton.
The contractor has until March 4, 2017, to complete the project, under a settlement agreement with Washington state. “We’re on schedule to meet that deadline,” Britton said.
Waste removal began in March of this year, and all liquid material — about 600,000 gallons — has been pumped to other double-shell waste tanks on site, along with about 112,000 gallons of sludge.
The project has faced a number of challenges, including an increase in the amount of waste leaking into the space between the shells — the annulus. That leak was the cause of the waste removal in the first place, but spiked significantly in mid-April during pumping operations, with the waste level in the annulus topping out at about 8.4 inches.
“During last Spring’s sludge retrieval about 3,000 gallons of waste entered the annulus due to sluicing efforts opening up a less-restricted pathway from the primary tank to the annulus,” Britton said by email Aug. 16. “The majority of the waste was pumped from the annulus back into the primary tank. We continue to monitor the annulus and have a contingency plan in place to pump the annulus as necessary.”
Once operations resume, they must adhere to restrictions on tank farm activities established after more than 50 workers in recent months reported possible exposure to vapors from the waste containers. The Department of Energy and WRPS have pledged to take a number of steps to protect workers in the tank farms, with some of those measures also subsequently required under a federal court order. These include only conducting operations that disturb tank waste, including waste removal from Tank AY-102, if safety reasons make the work necessary.
Washington state, the nongovernmental Hanford Challenge, and Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 598 have requested a preliminary injunction requiring further safety steps, and a hearing is scheduled in federal court in Spokane on Oct. 12. The outcome of that hearing will “dictate a lot of our preparations,” Britton said.
The project’s cost was not immediately available.
Leidos Officially on the Job at Hanford Contractor as Lockheed Deal Closes
Leidos Holdings, of Reston, Va., is officially a partner in the main support services contractor at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site, having completed its nearly $5-billion stock-and-cash acquisition of Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems and Global Solutions unit, the companies announced Aug. 16.
Leidos announced on Aug. 8 that its shareholders had overwhelmingly approved the acquisition. The IS&GS business being merged with Leidos is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md., and run by Sondra Barbour, a Lockheed veteran. The massive acquisition about doubles the size of Leidos to roughly $10 billion in annual revenue, according to the company’s press release about the merger and its latest 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The deal was financed with $2.8 billion in newly issued Leidos common shares, along with $1.8 billion in cash. The closure of the transaction was to trigger $1 billion worth of special dividend payments to Leidos common stockholders, according to the company.
Lockheed’s shares fell on the news, as the profit boost from the sale was smaller than analysts expected.
Leidos will now partner with Jacobs and Centerra in leading Mission Support Alliance, which provides emergency response, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and other services at the Department of Energy facility in Washington state. The consortium is in the seventh year of its Hanford Site contract, which was awarded in 2009 and, including options, could be worth $3.6 billion through 2019. DOE holds one more option on the deal: a two-year extension with a performance period that begins May 26, 2017.
“MSA is not anticipating any impacts to day-to-day operations because of the transaction,” company spokeswoman Rae Moss told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing Aug. 17.
Five Months After ACP Shutdown, Centrus Still Sketching Out D&D Plan
Centrus Energy is still trying to get a handle on how much it will cost, and how long it will take, to decontaminate and decommission the industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration known as the American Centrifuge Project that was taken off life support in Pike County, Ohio, earlier this year, according to filings with U.S. financial and nuclear regulators.
“We have experienced delays in beginning the D&D as we work to finalize necessary contractual and regulatory arrangements,” Daniel Poneman, Centrus’ president and CEO, said in an Aug. 11 conference call with investors. “We’re evaluating the impact the delays will have on future costs,” the former deputy energy secretary said.
Centrus is the former United States Enrichment Corp. The company reinvented itself as a fuel broker for commercial nuclear power plants after a 2014 bankruptcy reorganization, and has so far paid for five months worth of American Centrifuge Project (ACP) decontamination and decommissioning at the facility out of its own pocket.
Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing Aug. 12 ACP cleanup would continue into early 2017.
The exact cost and schedule of D&D will be outlined in an appendix to the detailed decommissioning plan Centrus eventually will file with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The company once thought it could submit the decommissioning plan for the main ACP cascade in mid-July, according to a PowerPoint presentation the company briefed at the NRC’s Rockville, Md., headquarters June 16 during a Lead Cascade Decommissioning Plan Pre-Submittal Meeting.
However, when mid-July rolled around, Centrus wrote NRC asking for more time to file the decommissioning plan, and put the agency on notice that the company might need help with the cleanup.
[T]he updated cost estimate will provide a better basis for establishing the amount of financial assurance required in the event that use of a third party to complete decommissioning was necessary,” Steven Toelle, Centrus’ director of regulatory affairs, wrote in a July 21 letter to Scott Moore, then-acting director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
Backstopping the cleanup at Piketon are $29 million in surety bonds, covering $16 million for decontamination and decommissioning and $13 million for lease expenses, Poneman said on the conference call. As of June 30, Centrus had racked up about $25 million in liability for decontamination and demolition charges alone, according to the CEO.
Besides decontaminating and decommissioning the building itself, Centrus also must dispose of classified and contaminated waste generated by three years of uranium-enrichment technology demonstration at Piketon. According to the June 16 slides briefed at NRC headquarters, Centrus plans to dispose of ACP waste at DOE’s Nevada National Security Site.
As it grapples with delays on the cleanup, Centrus must also decide — and soon — whether to give up its lease to the DOE-owned Piketon ACP facility. The company’s five-year lease runs out in 2019, and the terms of the deal require Centrus to give DOE three years notice before moving out, according to the company’s annual 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for 2015.
For now, Centrus is keeping its cards close to the vest.
“Centrus has not made a decision on lease turnover and is continuing to evaluate future uses for the site,” the company wrote in its latest quarterly earnings statement.
If Centrus does hang on to the Piketon building, the company could be a local fixture for decades to come. The company has the right, but not the obligation, to extend its lease into the early 2040s, and then again into the early 2060s, according to its 2015 10-K filing.
No Harmful Exposure From Smoking Waste Barrel at Hanford, WCH Says
Washington Closure Hanford isolated a barrel of waste that began smoking last week at the 618-10 Burial Ground of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., and said no one was injured in the incident.
Washington Closure Hanford (WCH), which is in the final month of an 11-year, $3 billion cleanup contract for much of the site’s roughly 220-square-mile river corridor area, unearthed the troublesome barrel Aug. 11. In what the company called a “reaction” to oxygen, as opposed to an explosion, the barrel began smoking, forcing about 130 workers to take cover for about 90 minutes.
Jerry Holloway, a spokesperson for the AECOM-led WCH, wrote in a Aug. 15 email there were “no indications that hazardous material, either chemical or radiological, escaped from the drum.”
“No personnel were exposed,” Holloway wrote. “The possibility of reactions is anticipated whenever a drum is opened, and the necessary precautions were followed. The drum has been reburied. A project review team will plan a path forward for the drum with additional controls in place.”
The Hanford river corridor cleanup project is nearly complete. The effort focused on the edge of the Hanford Site near the Columbia River and included dealing with nine former pluotnium production reactors and hundreds of other structures. The cleanup also included burial grounds such as 618-10, where contaminated waste was dumped during decades of plutonium refining during the Cold War nuclear arms race.
Citizens Committee Wants to Expedite SRS Waste Program
The Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board’s (CAB) waste management committee last week approved a recommendation to provide adequate funding to expedite liquid waste processing at the Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. Now, the recommendation will be taken up at a full board meeting next month. If approved there it will be sent to the Department of Energy headquarters for consideration.
The recommendation does not say how much the CAB thinks the liquid waste program needs each year. In fiscal 2015, the site received $712 million for liquid waste work; that rose to $784 million for the current budget year, which ends on Sept. 30.
The recommendation is based on the SRS Liquid Waste System Plan. The plan has been revised repeatedly over the years as SRS officials deal with newer challenges and schedule changes in its liquid waste work. The most current change, Revision 20, was introduced in March and includes different cases for future liquid waste operations. The “cases” are outlined projections for completed missions at SRS that depend on several factors, such as funding and workflow. Under the recommendation, the CAB would favor “Case 3,” which offers the fastest processes to treat the SRS waste.
For example, Case 3 suggests that all SRS liquid waste facilities be placed into decommissioning by 2038, three years sooner than Cases 1 and 2. Case 3 would also involve all of the sludge and salt waste in the storage tanks being treated by 2030, two years earlier than the other plans. All told, more than 40 SRS storage tanks currently house about 36 million gallons of liquid waste that dates to the Cold War.
While the recommendation favors Case 2, site officials don’t exactly decide which want they want to pursue. Rather, various factors, such as funding and meeting work schedules, determine which case the site is close to achieving. For example, the Liquid Waste System Plan states that the Case 3 goals were outlined “assuming funding restrictions are relaxed.”
Nuclear Industry Veteran Joins Longenecker Board
Management consulting firm Longenecker & Associates said Aug. 15 it added a longtime executive in nuclear decommissioning and cleanup operations to its Strategic Advisory Board.
John Lehew has worked for over three decades, both in the United States and abroad, “in operations, engineering, management, decommissioning and environmental remediation with demonstrated experience in managing complex projects involving multiple sites, organizations, contractors and regulatory agencies,” according to a Longenecker press release. “Mr. Lehew has extensive experience in major program management, including nuclear facility decommissioning, environmental remediation and construction. Mr. Lehew also has significant experience in nuclear reactor and nuclear facility operations, maintenance, start-up testing, emergency response, and readiness reviews.”
Lehew held several executive positions with CH2M before retiring last year, including senior vice president and global operations director for CH2M’s Environmental and Nuclear Market, president and CEO for the Hanford Site Central Plateau Remediation project, and site project manager/decommissioning project manager for the Dounreay nuclear facility in Scotland. Prior to joining CH2M, he worked in management at TENERA Federal Services LLC and EG&G Rocky Flats LLC.
The 17-member Strategic Advisory Board consists of managers with government and industry experience who can help Longenecker identify and address potential challenges to ensure they do not impact the firm’s mission. Members include former National Nuclear Security Administration Deputy Administrator Donald Cook, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions President and CEO Carol Johnson, and Berkshire Bridge Capital managing partner Robert Lind.
Johnson Retiring as Head of SRNS; MacVean to Take Over
Carol Johnson will retire as president and CEO of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the Energy Department confirmed Aug. 10, ending the nuclear veteran’s two-year tenure at the head of DOE’s prime management and operations contractor for the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.
“On July 21, 2016 SRNS notified the [Savannah River Site] Contracting Officer of Carol’s departure and requested [Contracting Officer] Key Personnel approval for Stuart MacVean to replace her,” DOE spokesman Jim Giusti said by email. “The SRNS request was approved on August 8, 2016.”
Johnson did not let the cat out of the bag until earlier this week, writing in an all-hands email to SRNS employees that “the time has come for me to return to the retirement and personal plans that were placed on hold when I was given the opportunity to serve as your President & CEO.”
Johnson, a 30-year nuclear industry veteran, joined SRNS parent company Fluor Corp. in 2014 to become president and chief executive of SRNS. Prior to that, she had spent two years as president and project manager for Washington Closure Hanford, which this year wraps up an 11-year run as DOE’s prime contractor on the Hanford Site’s Columbia River corridor cleanup near Richland, Wash. Washington Closure Hanford was led by URS, which is now part of AECOM.
MacVean, a Savannah River Site veteran, joined Fluor in February after two years with the Aiken, S.C., site’s AECOM-led prime liquid waste contractor, Savannah River Remediation. MacVean is currently vice president of operations for Fluor Government Group’s Environmental and Nuclear business. He will officially take the reins some time in September or October, Fluor spokeswoman Annika Toenniessen said Aug. 10.
Rumor of Johnson’s impending departure surfaced Aug. 9, nearly a month after three Democratic senators held a press conference in Washington, D.C., about whistleblower retaliation by DOE contractors. At the presser, former SRNS employee Sandra Black alleged Johnson fired her in 2015 for cooperating with the Government Accountability Office’s recently concluded probe into whistleblower culture across the DOE nuclear complex.
SRNS has forcefully denied this, and disputes Black’s version of events. Neither Fluor nor SRNS would discuss whether Johnson’s departure was precipitated or hastened by the whistleblower controversy.
“Carol has done an outstanding job at SRNS. Her dedication and leadership has moved the site forward in many ways,” Bruce Stanski, Fluor Government Group president, wrote in a prepared statement. “Carol will stay engaged with Fluor in a part-time role in the future.”
News of Johnson’s retirement also coincides closely with DOE’s Aug. 4 announcement that it had exercised the remaining two options on SRNS’ management and operations contract at the Savannah River Site, which would keep the company on the job through July 31, 2018. All told, the company’s 10-year contract could be worth up to $8 billion, including options.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s husband Mike Johnson will evidently follow his wife in leaving the nuclear life in South Carolina. Mike Johnson has been executive director of the nuclear-friendly interest group Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness for about a year. According to its website, the Aiken-based group, “pro-nuclear and proud of it,” was founded in 1991 “to sensitize elected officials and the public to the need to acquire new missions for the Savannah River Site.”
Washington State Fines DOE, Hanford Contractor Over Waste Handling
The Washington state Department of Ecology said Aug. 9 it fined the Department of Energy and Hanford Site cleanup contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Co. $50,000 for not following regulations for storage of dangerous waste at the facility’s T Plant. The state also ordered DOE and its contractor to designate waste, to obtain detailed analysis of dangerous waste before storage, and to properly maintain records.
The penalty and order followed a Nov. 18, 2015, inspection of waste generated and stored at T Plant. At issue were five containers holding waste that included leaking batteries, grease, or paint chips and pieces of concrete. Some of the waste came from floor scrapings that might include small amounts of radioactive contamination. But the main issue appeared to be Hanford officials’ continuing problems in adhering to requirements to designate waste before it is stored and to maintain required records, according to state documents.
It was the fifth state inspection of T Plant since 2000 to find problems, but the first to result in a fine. “Our inspectors have repeatedly cited Energy and its contractors for the same violations at the T Plant,” said Alex Smith, Ecology’s nuclear waste program manager, in a statement. “For everyone’s safety, dangerous waste at this nuclear facility must be properly managed and stored.” T Plant was built during World War II to remove plutonium from irradiated fuel, but now is used to treat and store waste.
The Department of Energy plans to discuss opportunities for improvement with the state, but also ask for clarification on some of Ecology’s findings. “For example, our records show the contractor did identify and designate all of the waste in the five containers by November 2015, and we will be inquiring about the possibility of a miscommunication on at least one of the violations,” said DOE spokesman Mark Heeter.
State documents indicate that waste was not designated on the day of the inspection, but may have been within that week. They also indicate Hanford records on the waste were not produced within 24 hours as required.
DOE and CH2M have 30 days to appeal the order and penalty to the Washington state Pollution Control Hearings Board. The state pointed out that CH2M may not use cleanup funds to pay penalties.
Interim Storage a ‘Major Priority’ for New Mexico, Outgoing Environment Chief Says
Departing New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn made it clear last week: the administration of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) welcomes interim storage of high-level nuclear waste from U.S. power plants.
Holtec International in November plans to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 70,000-metric-ton-capacity disposal facility to be located about 10 miles from the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) transuranic waste-disposal facility near Carlsbad.
“We really want that facility,” Flynn told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in an Aug. 2 phone interview. “We feel very good about the people we have working on it. The relationship with Holtec is strong.”
Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists got the jump on Holtec by filing its license application with the NRC in April for a 40,000-metric-ton facility in West Texas not far from the New Mexico border. The NRC license review is expected to take two years or more.
Flynn was to step down Aug. 12 after five years in the Martinez administration, the last three-and-a-half as New Mexico’s top environmental regulator. In the past, Flynn has played down the state’s interest in interim storage, sticking to well-socialized language about how New Mexico should focus on reopening WIPP before thinking about any other type of nuclear waste facility. The storage site has been closed since a fire and subsequent, unrelated radiation release in February 2014.
While Flynn, on the cusp of what will be at least a hiatus from public life, was ready to look beyond the WIPP reopening, other New Mexico politicians with statewide constituencies were not.
“No matter where it’s built, whether the site is in Southeastern New Mexico or anywhere else in the U.S., I don’t support creating a new interim disposal site without a plan for permanent disposal because nuclear waste could be orphaned there indefinitely,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) wrote in a statement emailed to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing Aug. 9. “I also believe that it’s far too early to talk about interim nuclear storage in New Mexico while the state and the Department of Energy are still addressing the WIPP accident and radiation release.”
The Obama administration in 2011 canceled plans for a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste, officially replacing it in late 2015 with a “consent-based” plan that envisions establishing a pilot storage facility by 2021; one or more larger, interim facilities for spent nuclear fuel by 2025; and at least one permanent geologic repository by 2048.
Last year, Udall and fellow New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich issued a joint statement opposing interim nuclear waste storage in the Land of Enchantment. This year, the senators have been largely spared from taking a public stance on interim storage, although both voted for a fiscal 2017 energy and water spending bill that directs the Energy Department to conduct a pilot project for interim waste storage “through 1 or more private sector partners.”
A Heinrich spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment this week.
WIPP closed to new waste shipments after an improperly packaged barrel of radio-contaminated material and equipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory some 300 miles north burst open in the mine. The Department of Energy recently acknowledged the mine might not reopen in December as announced in February. Nevertheless, the agency’s latest public schedule for WIPP recovery shows DOE only months, not years, behind.
Yet even if WIPP reopens in December, any action on interim storage, whether in New Mexico or elsewhere, will likely wait until after the dust settles from the U.S. presidential election, Flynn thinks. Along with the White House, some Washington watchers believe control of the U.S. Senate may be up for grabs again.
“Time is working against us a little bit,” Flynn said. “I think that decision’s probably going to span over to the next presidential administration. So there’s always the risk that as people kind of step into new roles and have to get themselves back up to speed, that could delay action.”
Nevertheless, the outgoing secretary said, interim waste storage is “another major priority” for the state government.
AECOM 3Q Revenue Down 3%, Management Services Revenue Down 5.5%
AECOM reported Aug. 9 $4.4 billion in revenue for the third quarter of its fiscal 2016, down 3 percent from $4.5 billion the same period last year. It also reported net income of $67.4 million and earnings per share of $0.43 for the period ending June 30, an 11 percent and 10 percent increase, respectively, from the same period last year.
AECOM is a major player in facility management and nuclear cleanup for the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy, partnering in consortiums that manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the Nevada National Security Site, and Washington Closure Hanford. It also leads the groups that offer liquid waste remediation at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and transuranic waste storage at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
AECOM’s Management Services business segment, which includes the company’s DOE and NNSA contracts, brought in $804 million in quarterly revenue, down from $851.7 million for fiscal third-quarter 2015. Adjusted operating income of $75 million – a combination of income from operations and amortization of intangible assets – was down from $93 million. The segment also reported a $39.3 million gross profit in the latest quarter.
Troy Rudd, AECOM executive vice president and chief financial officer, said during an earnings call Aug. 9 the business segment’s revenue declined by 5.5 percent. “The operating margin declined to 9.3 percent from 10.9 percent last year but remained above our long-term expectations of approximately 8 percent,” he said. “This margin performance is driven by large, incentive-based contracts where we have a strong history of execution.”
“In Management Services, we delivered another solid quarter of profitability and further added to our already strong pipeline,” Chairman and CEO Michael Burke said during the call.
“We were selected for $400 million of new work after the quarter close, have submitted $15 billion of bids for client evaluation, and anticipate submitting another $10 billion of bids over the coming months,” Burke said, adding, “We are leveraging all of our capabilities to pursue large nuclear decommissioning work.”
The management and operations contract for LANL, currently held by a partnership of AECOM, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, and the University of California, will expire in 2018. Meanwhile, AECOM has expressed some interest in the SRS liquid waste contract currently held by its partnership with Bechtel, BWXT, and CH2M, which expires next June.
The company expects capital expenditures of approximately $150 million in this fiscal year and is “on track to achieve its $325 million run-rate synergy savings target by the end of fiscal 2017,” it said in an earnings announcement.
AECOM’s Design and Consulting Services business segment earned $1.9 billion in revenue in the third quarter and an adjusted operating income of $150 million. The company’s Construction Services segment earned $1.7 billion in revenue and $23 million in adjusted operating income.
The company is reiterating adjusted earnings per share guidance for the fiscal year of $3.00 to $3.40.
DOE Proposes Tightening Its Whistleblower Protection Program
About a month after three senators publicly took the Energy Department to task for allegedly allowing its contractors to browbeat and fire employees for raising safety concerns, the agency is proposing what it says are clearer, stricter rules to protect whistleblowers across the complex.
In a notice of planned rulemaking posted online late last week, DOE proposed changes to the federal rules governing its whistleblower program. Among the highlights, the agency said it will impose stricter standards on paying contractor court costs arising from whistleblower complaints, and clarify when, exactly, a whistleblower complaint concerns a serious nuclear safety issue.
Currently, federal rules do not spell out when DOE may punish contractors who retaliate against workers who allege violations of the agency’s legally binding nuclear safety requirements, according to the notice. DOE’s nuclear safety requirements, include, among other things, rules for managing nuclear materials, protecting workers from radiation, and keeping accurate records on nuclear sites.
Protecting contractor employees was among the top concerns expressed by three senators who two years ago asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate alleged whistleblower retaliation across the DOE nuclear complex. On July 14, that probe effectively concluded with the publication of a strongly worded GAO report that said DOE looked the other way while its contractors silenced, and in some cases fired, employees who broke the chain of command to report safety concerns.
“[T]he Department has gone to great lengths to ensure that employees can raise concerns about health, safety and management issues without fear of retaliation, Steve Croley, DOE’s general counsel, wrote in an Aug. 4 blog post publicizing the notice of proposed rulemaking. “Going forward, if a contractor employee calls attention to a radiation hazard that is in violation of a nuclear safety requirement and the contractor retaliates against the employee for raising the issue, the contractor may be subject to a civil penalty for creating the radiation hazard and the contractor may have to compensate the employee for the retaliation.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the three lawmakers who called out DOE in the July press conference that coincided with the release of the GAO report, was unmoved by the agency’s latest move, calling it too little, too late.
“When you turn in your assignment late, you shouldn’t get extra credit for it,” Wyden said in a statement emailed to the press Aug. 5. “That’s what the Department of Energy is trying to do with this announcement … the department has known for three years it didn’t have adequate regulations for protecting workers who raise concerns about nuclear safety violations,” Wyden said.
Among the instances of contractor retaliation recounted in the July press conference hosted by Wyden and Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) were the cases of Sandra Black and Walter Tamosaitis.
Black, a former employee Savannah River Site management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, alleged she was fired for cooperating with the GAO when it came to investigate whistleblower culture at the facility near Aiken, S.C. Black’s former employer denied firing her for that reason.
Tamosaitis, a former employee of URS Energy, now an AECOM subsidiary, gained national attention after he netted $4 million from the company in 2015 to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit. Tamosaitis says he was fired for pointing out design flaws in the Waste Treatment Plant could cause a hydrogen buildup that would result in a high-pressure explosion. In 2012, DOE called a halt to most construction on the plant, which is being designed to immobilize 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical waste left over from Cold War-era plutonium production at DOE’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. AECOM denied any wrongdoing by URS is agreeing to the settlement.
Executives Out in Leadership Shakeup for Nuclear Industry Group
Senate-staffer-turned-nuclear-industry-lobbyist Alex Flint is leaving the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) after 10 years as the advocacy group’s top policy man in Washington, the trade association announced Aug. 5.
Flint’s departure as head of the group’s governmental affairs office is part of a larger shakeup at NEI, which is cutting senior management positions as part of a reorganization initiated earlier this year by President and CEO Marvin Fertel, 69, who will retire in October after seven years leading the group. Scott Peterson, longtime head of NEI’s communications division, is also leaving.
As part of the organizational shift detailed in an Aug. 4 memo from Fertel, NEI will combine its governmental affairs, communications, and policy divisions into a single external affairs division that will be led by a new, vice president-level hire to be named later. An executive search is underway now for the new vice president of external affairs, NEI spokesman John Kelley told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing Aug. 8.
Flint and Peterson, are senior vice presidents.
Maria Korsnick, NEI’s current chief operating officer, is among the internal candidates being considered to replace Fertel as president and chief executive, Kelley said.
Flint has been senior vice president of NEI’s government affairs division since he joined the organization in 2006. Peterson has been with NEI since 1994, when the group was created in a three-way merger of other nuclear industry advocacy groups. Flint and Peterson will both leave “in the fall,” according to Fertel’s memo.
BWXT Revenue, Income Up in 2Q
Energy and Defense departments contractor BWX Technologies on Aug. 8 reported year-over-year growth both in revenue and earnings for the second quarter of 2016.
Revenue rose by 13% from $357.1 million in second-quarter 2015 to $402.4 million in the latest reporting period, according to a company press release. Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) earnings per share from continuing operations spiked from zero for last year’s quarter to $0.55 in the second quarter of 2016, including a $0.10 per share benefit from a litigation win, while non-GAAP EPS from continuing operations were up from $0.32 to $0.44 over that same period.
Consolidated GAAP operating income was up to $88.5 million in the latest quarter from $11.6 million in second-quarter 2015, encompassing a $16.1 million benefit from a litigation win. Quarterly consolidated non-GAAP operating income rose by about 32 percent, from $54.7 million in 2015 to $72.4 million in 2016. “The increase in non-GAAP operating income was driven by operating income growth in our Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Operations segments as well as reduced mPower small modular reactor and corporate costs,” the press release says.
BWXT’s Nuclear Operations services include production of parts and fuel for naval reactors. The branch’s revenue rose about 12% year over year, from $291.8 million in second-quarter 2015 to $325.7 million this year, “due to favorable timing of long-lead material into the second quarter,” the company said. BWXT also reported a 5% spike in operating income, from $61.1 million to $64.4 million.
In the Technical Services segment, year-over-year revenue spiked from $21.6 million to $23.1 million, while operating income was down from $5.5 million to $4.6 million. Nuclear Energy branch revenue rose from $45.5 million in second-quarter 2015 to $54.1 million in second-quarter 2016; GAAP operating income hit $26.5 million and non-GAAP operating income $10.4 million in the latest reporting period, up from $2.4 million a year ago.
The Lynchburg, Va.-based company split off from Babcock & Wilcox in 2015. Along with work for the Pentagon and private sector, it is a major contractor for cleanup projects overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. It is one of the parent companies of Savannah River Remediation, liquid waste management contractor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and is a partner with Fluor in the decontamination and decommissioning of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio.
SRS to Begin Double-Stacking Waste Canisters This Summer
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina is scheduled to begin double-stacking canisters of solidified radioactive waste before the end of the summer, according to a press release Aug. 8.
The stacking is intended to save space at the Department of Energy site’s Glass Waste Storage Building 1, delaying the need to build another storage facility.
In June, SRS liquid waste contractor Savannah River Remediation used a transport system in a test to both stack and retrieve two containers that did not hold radioactive material.
Workers are converting 21-foot-deep spaces in GWSB1 to fit two 10-foot-tall canisters rather than the current single container. This involves taking out the support crossbars used now and removal of a 4-foot-thick “shield plug” made of concrete and used to seal each canister at the top. “This shield plug will be replaced by a thinner, galvanized cast iron shield plug, which will provide equivalent radiation shielding and structural support,” the press release says. “In addition to the shield plugs, steel-support plates will be installed in place of the crossbar base support.”
Of the 2,254 crossbars to be removed, over 200 have already been extracted. Of that number, more than 100 storage slots are ready for double-stacking. It will take up to seven to eight more years to complete the preparations, ultimately creating 4,508 spaces. GWSB1 should now have viable storage space through fiscal 2026, pushing back construction of another facility that could cost up to $74 million, the release says. The project also allows for ongoing processing of SRS tank waste at the Defense Waste Processing Facility, which converts the material into a glass form. The processed waste would ultimately be transported to another site for permanent storage, but in the interim would be safe while double-stacked at SRS, DOE said.
