The U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday it has contracted five small businesses to provide $24.9 million worth of demolition and other cleanup services for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
The selected companies are: Aerostar SES, of Oak Ridge; ARS Aleut Remediation, of Port Allen, La.; CTI and Associates, of Knoxville, Tenn.; GEM Technologies, also of Knoxville; and TerranearPMC, of Exton, Pa.
The Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) issued an indefinite delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to each company, through which DOE could issue firm-fixed-price taskings for select projects. The work is expected to cover teardown of lower-hazard structures, waste disposal, and technical support, according to an OREM press release.
“With the contract award today, we are still in the early stages of that process. We are currently working to identify the projects that best advance our cleanup and align with the scope and requirements of this contract.
OREM manages environmental remediation throughout the 32,400-acre Oak Ridge Reservation, which began operations during the Manhattan Project and continues to house active operations including the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The cleanup prime for the site is URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), under a $2.7 billion contract set to expire in July 2020.
On its procurement website, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management cited a list of potential assignments for contractors, including: preparation of Federal Facilities Agreement documentation, such as data quality objectives, sampling analysis plans, waste handling plans, and technical memos; deactivation, demolition, and remediation of low-risk, low-complexity facilities; disposal of primary and secondary waste; and providing technical briefings and reports.
All of the awardees will be able to compete for each task under this contract, and selections will be based on the identified basis of award for each task order. The number will depend on the price associated with each task order due to the $24.9 million total.
Officials from the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the New Mexico Environment Department are set to meet in July to discuss legacy nuclear-waste-cleanup priorities for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2020, the chair of an agency-funded advisory group said Wednesday.
“The [New Mexico] Environmental Department and Los Alamos [Environmental Management] begin their discussions on the 2020 milestones and budgets some time beginning in July,” Stan Riveles, chair of the DOE-chartered Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board, said in Augusta, Ga., during a meeting of EM Advisory Board chairs.
Under a consent order finalized in 2016, the state of New Mexico agreed to let DOE EM clean up Cold War nuclear waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) without setting a hard date to finish the work.
The state and the federal agency — which has blown multiple long-term cleanup deadlines at LANL — argued at the time that the consent order’s flexible remediation “campaigns” make it easier to attract funding from Congress by focusing on certain parts of the lab. Under previous consent orders, EM was obliged to clean up the whole facility at once, meaning a snarl with one project might sap funding from another that was clipping along.
The federal and state agencies can also modify the cleanup campaigns year to year, giving DOE a way to press on with a project in one section of the site if unforeseen obstacles arise at another.
“We think the rolling milestones at Los Alamos are working well,” Mark Gilbertson, DOE’s principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management, told Riveles on Wednesday.
The Washington state Department of Ecology has opened a 60-day comment period for a proposed permit revision on a project to remove cesium and solids from tank waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site.
In a May 1 notice, the state agency said it will accept public input through June 30 on a request by the Energy Department and contractor Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) to modify the state’s Hanford Facility Dangerous Waste Permit to add a new operating unit for the low-activity waste pretreatment system.
The planned cesium removal system would be developed in two parts. Phase one would include construction and operation of a tank-side cesium removal unit. The second phase would address either adding a second tank-side unit, or a permanent cesium-removal facility, to support treatment of low-activity waste.
The current application covers only construction and operation for phase one.
Washington River Protection Solutions manages 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste left over from a half-century of plutonium production at the Hanford Site. The waste is currently stored in 177 underground tanks.
The cesium would be removed from waste in double-shell tanks prior to vitrification in the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel. The plant will turn much of the Hanford tank waste into a glass-like form for safe storage and eventual disposal.
A public meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. local time May 29, at the Richland, Wash., Public Library. Individuals who cannot make the meeting can participate via webinar at this site. Comments can be filed electronically here.
Questions can be sent to DOE’s Paula Call at [email protected]; or Ecology’s Daina McFadden at [email protected].
The members of the Tri-Party Agreement governing cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state will hold their annual budget meeting May 15 in Richland. The meeting will focus on budget priorities for fiscal 2021, with information provided by the Department of Energy and its Hanford regulators, the Washington state Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is an initial step in the budget process as DOE develops its next budget request for Hanford. At the meeting the three agencies will discuss the effect of budget decisions on priorities for remediation at the former plutonium production complex, as well as outline any changes to cleanup objectives and decisions at Hanford.
The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate Drive, and also may be attended by webinar. Go to May 15 on the events calendar at www.hanford.gov for details on attending the webinar.
Written public comments will be accepted in writing at the meeting or may be emailed to [email protected] from May 15 to June 15.
