An affiliate of Idaho-based North Wind Group was picked by the Department of Energy from a field of eight firms to build a $50-million research center for nuclear cleanup at the University of South Carolina at Aiken, located about 20 miles from the Savannah River Site.
Roughly six months after issuing a sources-sought for contractors, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) said in a Thursday press release that North Wind Construction Services will design and build the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative.
North Wind is a familiar player around the weapons complex. It runs the Transuranic Waste Processing Center at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, is lead partner in the landlord services contract for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and does cleanup at the Energy Technology and Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California.
The contractor “has a proven track record of working with DOE and successfully completing similar projects,” the agency said in the press release. North Wind Group is a subsidiary of Cook Inlet Region, Inc., an Alaska Native corporation, and the DOE deal is an 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business set-aside, according to the release.
“North Wind has been working in and around Aiken, S.C. since 2010, and we are thrilled to be able to support DOE EM and the Savannah River National Laboratory with in such an important project to design and construct this state-of-the-art facility,” North Wind Group President and CEO Leichtweis said in a statement emailed Friday. North Wind in November merged with LBYD Engineers (Southeast region), which will provide engineering expertise on the project, Leichtweis added.
The Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative is now fully funded after receiving its second $25-million installment in the Savannah River Site’s fiscal 2021 budget, a planning official for the nuclear cleanup office told the Environmental Management Advisory Board in March.
The new research center is meant to assist DOE, industry and the Savannah River National Laboratory develop safer and more cost-effective nuclear chemical manufacturing technology to help accelerate cleanup. The location of the facility came about through a no-cost land lease agreement between the federal government and the Aiken County Commission for Higher Education, according to the press release.
Design is expected to be completed this year and construction is expected to be completed in 2024, DOE said.
A special congressional election is set for June 1 in New Mexico to fill the vacancy in the district that includes the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories facilities in Albuquerque.
The open seat was created March 16 when then-Rep. Debra Haaland (D) resigned to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of interior after being confirmed in a 51-to-40 vote by the Senate.
On Saturday, the Republican Party of New Mexico picked state Sen. Mark Moores to be its candidate, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. Moores finished ahead of talk radio host Eddy Aragon in a vote by the party’s central committee. Several Democrats in the New Mexico Legislature are among prospective candidates for the seat.
Days after Haaland’s resignation, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver issued a proclamation setting the First Congressional district special election date and giving political parties and independent candidates until April 6 to file declarations of candidacy, according to a summary posted on the secretary of state website.
Voter registration ends May 4, which is 28 days before the election. The May 4 date also marks the point when some early in-person voting starts and county clerks can begin mailing ballots to eligible voters who have requested an absentee ballot. May 29 will be the last day of early voting, according to the special election data on the website. The state canvas board will certify the election June 22.
Haaland, who is now the first Native American cabinet secretary, was first elected to the congressional seat in November 2018 and then re-elected in November 2020. In mid-December, then-President-elect Biden announced plans to nominate the House member to head the Department of Interior.
Two key Congressional Democrats from Washington state, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Adam Smith, are proposing to make it easier for cleanup workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site and elsewhere to claim medical benefits after being exposed to toxic substances.
The lawmakers last week proposed the Toxic Exposure Safety Act of 2021. Murray, who looks after Hanford funding as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Smith who chairs the House Armed Service Committee, are backing companion bills in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
In addition to the Toxic Exposure Safety Act of 2021, Murray has also introduced legislation to encourage new technology to help DOE’s Office of Environmental Management clean up contaminated nuclear sites. The cleanup office’s needs for breakthrough technology is a need cited by the National Academies of Science and others in recent years.
The technology bill has been assigned to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
As of Thursday evening the text of the technology bill, S. 1065, was not available yet on the congress.gov website. There was an online summary, saying the measure would “increase collaboration between offices within the Department of Energy to develop and deploy technology to assist the mission of the Office of Environmental Management.”
The health measure would expand access to benefits under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 to include workers exposed to toxic substances at cleanup sites, according to a one-page fact sheet.
The legislation includes funding for a five-year, $15-million epidemiological study. It also calls upon the Department of Health and Human Services to commission the National Academies to summarize existing research on the link between various diseases and exposure to toxic substances at DOE sites. The legislation was sparked by a 2020 Seattle Times report on debilitating illnesses suffered by some long-time workers at the Hanford Site, according to the summary.
