With the retirement of a top executive, Sharon Smoot will step in as president of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group effective Aug. 1, the company said in a press release Wednesday morning.
In her new role, Smoot will be responsible for the operations group’s complete range of nuclear components and services, “including the manufacture of nuclear reactor components for U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers and other nuclear and non-nuclear R&D and component production,” BWXT said in the release.
BWXT appointed Smoot to replace Joel Duling, who announced last week that he planned to retire as head of the Lynchburg, Va.-based operations group on Friday.
Smoot joins BWXT after spending three decades in the U.S. Navy, including in the senior executive service position as executive director for logistics, maintenance and industrial operations for the Naval Sea Systems Command. She also worked in the Navy’s Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Fleet Forces Command and at Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
The Department of Energy has extended by one week, until 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 1, the bid deadline for the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support Contract, which is potentially worth $2.9 billion over 10 years.
The earlier deadline for proposals was July 25 for the contract that includes conversion of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) at the DOE gaseous diffusion plants at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky to uranium oxide, a more stable form for storage, transport or disposal.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the one-week extension in a Thursday notice on the federal procurement website, SAM.gov. Conversion plants have been operating at Portsmouth and Paducah since 2011.
The DOE issued a request for proposals May 25 for both the DUF6 work at the two sites. The same day a solicitation was also issued for the $5.87-billion Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract. Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Service has owned the current DUF6 contract since February 2017 and that agreement, now valued at $703 million, is currently set to sunset March 28, 2023.
Street Legal Industries, a woman-owned small business based in Oak Ridge, Tenn., has landed two contracts together worth up to $3 million for support services at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, according to notices posted recently on a federal procurement website, SAM.gov.
The general services work includes a wide range of support for the DOE’s quality assurance oversight of the Waste Treatment Plant contractor, Bechtel, according to an agency spokesperson. The other contract involves supporting planning for Hanford tank farms.
The larger contract could be worth up to $2.17 million, according to a July 19 notice, while the smaller piece of business has a potential value of up to $950,000, according to another notice published July 19.
