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$8 million awarded to small businesses for Hanford cleanup

02.08.2011

RICHLAND, Wash.—Washington Closure Hanford has awarded subcontracts worth $8 million to three small businesses to provide labor and equipment for cleanup of the 618-10 Burial Ground at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford Site. Funding for the work is provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Two subcontracts totaling nearly $2.1 million were awarded for lease of heavy equipment. CWR Enterprises of Rathdrum, Idaho, partnered with Rowand Machinery of Pasco, for a $1,378,000 subcontract to provide construction heavy equipment. Also providing construction heavy equipment under a $718,000 subcontract is Acquisition Business Consultants of Richland, which partnered with Peters & Keatts of Lewiston, Idaho.

A third subcontract worth nearly $6 million was awarded to Phoenix Enterprises NW, Richland, to provide craft and other non-manual labor.

“In order to complete cleanup on the River Corridor by 2015, remediation of this high-hazard burial ground is critical,” said Mark French, DOE’s Federal Project Director for the River Corridor.

The 618-10 Burial Ground is the most hazardous site yet to be encountered and is expected to contain significant unknowns. As a result, Washington Closure elected to self-perform the direct management of the cleanup effort using subcontracted labor and equipment.

“This is a different way for us to do business,” said John Darby, project manager for trench remediation of the 618-10 Burial Ground.

“We know this is going to be a very hazardous and challenging cleanup job,” said Darby. “We expect we’ll have to start and stop the job frequently depending on what we find, potentially reassessing our methods as we go to accommodate unexpected findings. We decided it would be best for us to provide direct oversight and management of the entire workforce.”

Recordkeeping was poor when the burial ground operated in the 1950s and 60s. But available records indicate the buried wastes include radiologically contaminated laboratory instruments, bottles, boxes, filters, aluminum cuttings, metallurgical samples, electrical equipment, lighting fixtures, barrels, laboratory equipment and hoods, and highly radioactive wastes in shielded (or concreted) drums.

The burial ground contains low-level waste and some highly radioactive waste from Hanford’s reactor fuel development and manufacturing facilities. The wastes were buried in 12 trenches and 94 vertical pipe units from March 1954 through September 1963. The vertical pipe units are five, 55-gallon drums welded end-to-end and buried vertically in the soil, into which radioactive wastes were disposed.

The subcontracts just awarded are for work on the trenches only. Cleanup work on the trenches is to begin in March.

Cleanup of the 618-10 Burial Ground is part of the 220-square-mile River Corridor Closure Project, the nation’s largest environmental cleanup closure project. Washington Closure manages the $2.4 billion project for the DOE’s Richland Operations Office and is on track to complete the project by 2015.

The company is responsible for protecting the Columbia River by demolishing 486 buildings, cleaning up 396 waste sites, placing two surplus plutonium production reactors and one nuclear facility in interim safe storage, and managing the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. Washington Closure is a limited liability company owned by URS, Bechtel National and CH2M Hill.

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