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Washington Closure names new Field Remediation Director

06.07.2011

RICHLAND, Wash.—Robert D. Cantwell has been selected as the new director for Field Remediation for Washington Closure Hanford.

As director, Cantwell is responsible for cleaning up an estimated 550 contaminated waste sites and burial grounds in the 220-square-mile River Corridor at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state.

Cantwell began his career in the nuclear industry in 1984 as an engineering laboratory technician in the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power Program aboard the USS Enterprise.

He began his career in the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and cleanup of radioactive waste sites in 1990 when he went to work for EG&G at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado.

In 2000, Cantwell moved to the Richland area as a member of Washington Safety Management Solutions (WSMS), later acquired by URS, to help manage the stabilization of plutonium at Hanford’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. For the next seven years, he provided management support to a number of WSMS clients, including work at the Hanford tank farms and Washington Closure, which he joined as radiological control manager in late 2007.

He was appointed deputy director of Field Remediation for Washington Closure in late 2008, a position he held until being named director in April 2011.

Cantwell earned his bachelor’s degree in Applied Science and Technology at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1994 and is a certified member of the Project Management Institute.

Washington Closure manages the $2.3 billion River Corridor Closure Project at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 586-square-mile Hanford Site. It is the largest environmental cleanup closure project in the nation. The company is responsible for demolishing 312 contaminated facilities, cleaning up an estimated 550 wastes sites, placing two 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, CH2M Hill and Bechtel National and DOE’s largest cleanup closure project.

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Photo available at: www.washingtonclosure.com/documents/gallery/photos/Cantwell_Rob02.jpg