U.S. Department of Energy awards contract to Central Plateau Cleanup Company

The Central Plateau Cleanup Company, LLC (CPCC) will lead nuclear decommissioning efforts at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford site near Richland, Wash., as part of a 10-year DOE contract valued up to $10 billion.

Central Plateau is a joint venture led by AECOM Management Services Group. It also includes the engineering and maintenance Fluor Corporation, as well as Atkins, a business unit of SNC-Lavalin’s global nuclear sector. The contract binding them is a single indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (IDIQ) that forges them into the single largest nuclear end state delivery team under the DOE.

“We’re pleased that DOE has given us the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new end state contract approach and to accelerate progress already made in the Central Plateau,” Tom D’Agostino, president of Fluor’s Government Group, said. “Fluor began its 13-year tenure at Hanford in 1996 to manage most of the site’s cleanup work and has been an integrated part of the community since then. With this award, we anticipate strengthening our community relationships further, and we look forward to working with union leadership, incumbent employees, the DOE, regulators, and other Hanford contractors to shift to a unified closure mentality and safely accelerate the completion timeline.”

Hanford originally began producing plutonium for weapons material operations in 1943. In 1989, it shifted operations to waste management and environmental cleanup. The AECOM-led team will now perform services for transition to the CPCC, file supporting documents, manage operations for the site’s cleanup facilities and begin deactivating, decommissioning, decontaminating and demolishing facilities while remediating waste sites. Waste will be retrieved, treated, stored, and removed.

“We appreciate the Department of Energy’s trust in awarding this contract to the Central Plateau Cleanup Company,” said Mark Whitney, AECOM’s executive vice president and general manager of Nuclear & Environment strategic business unit. “We welcome the opportunity to continue our successful cleanup efforts in the DOE complex and reduce the environmental risk for the Tri City communities in Washington State.”