Bechtel Unit Gets Nuclear Pact Worth $1 Billion
The Energy Department on Friday selected a Bechtel Corp. subsidiary to design the entire disposal system for highly radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear power stations.
Separately, the department’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., office said it will enter a five-year extension of existing contracts with a Martin Marietta Corp. subsidiary to operate four nuclear weapons plants and a laboratory in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Under a 10-year contract for about $100 million a year, a team headed by Bechtel Systems Management Inc. will design the waste packaging, transportation system, temporary “monitored retrievable storage” depot, if one is built, and the ultimate underground permanent storage installation now planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev., about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Team Members
San Francisco-based Bechtel, which is privately held, is a leading designer and builder of nuclear facilities.
The company says it has managed $85 billion in nuclear-related contracts, including the development of 99 nuclear units worldwide.
Other companies on Bechtel’s team are Westinghouse Electric Corp.; Batelle Memorial Institute; Science Applications International Corp.; Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas; Dames & Moore; Shannon & Wilson, and Los Alamos Technical Associates.
Losing bidders in competition for the contract were TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc. and Systems Engineering & Management Corp., a group formed by Ralph M. Parsons Corp. of Pasadena, and Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. of Boston.
The two contracts cover the gaseous diffusion plants at Oak Ridge, Paducah, Ky. and Portsmouth, Ohio; the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Oak Ridge Y-12 weapons component plant. The Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant has been shut down, but employees there support the other plants.
The Portsmouth plant has been in a separate contract and the other four units have been lumped together, but the department said it was now putting the Oak Ridge installations in one contract and the Paducah and Portsmouth plants in another.
This will “focus management attention on the uranium enrichment enterprise,” the department said.
The current contracts expire next Sept. 30. About 18,800 people work in the five installations, the department said.
