Bechtel SAIC Ousted as Yucca Mountain Manager

“We're obviously disappointed,” says Jason Bohne, a Bechtel SAIC spokesman. “We're proud of the work we've done there.”

By Tony Illia

Bechtel SAIC Corp. LLC has been ousted as longtime manager of the U.S. Dept. of Energy's nuclear waste depository project at Yucca Mountain located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The unexpected switch comes at a time of great uncertainty for the project with the presidential elections leading to a likely change of top energy administration officials. The most recent price-tag for the depository is $90 billion or $19 billion more than last year's estimate. Mounting federal debt, however, makes the undertaking whose history stretches back to 1978 costly given the slumping the economy.

San Francisco-based Bechtel and SAIC, San Diego, lost their bid to keep the job they had held since 2001. SAIC and TRW Environmental Safety Systems, Fairfax, Va., served as manager before them. Bechtel is additionally construction manager for McCarran International Airport's five-year, $3.8 billion capital improvement program.

Photo courtesy Department of Energy.

“We're obviously disappointed,” says Jason Bohne, a Bechtel SAIC spokesman. “We're proud of the work we've done there.”

USA Repository Services won the five-year, $2.5 billion performance-based, cost-plus contract. The winning team led by San Francisco-based URS Corp., includes Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure Inc., Baton Rouge, La., and French-based Areva SA. The job carries a potential five-year extension through March 31, 2019. A third failed bid came from The Babcock & Wilcox Co., Lynchburg, Va.

"URS has a long history of supporting the DOE,” said Tom Zarges, president of URS's Washington division, in a statement. “[We have] managed many successful projects including the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the nation's only operating deep geological nuclear waste repository."

The election outcome could play a huge role in the Yucca Mountain's future. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to kill plans for a repository and shelf support for new nuclear plants until waste and safety issues are resolved. “I am opposed to Yucca Mountain,” Obama said to a Las Vegas crowd in January. “I have consistently said that I am opposed to Yucca Mountain, and that will not change.”

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The DOE, after two decades of heated debate, filed a formal application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June to build the Yucca Mountain project, which would hold up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste now stored at 121 temporary sites in 39 states.

Spent utility fuel and high-level defense waste would be placed in specially engineered containers housed inside a network of tunnels built deep within the mountain.

The DOE is expected to brief the three contractor teams on its selection later this month. Losing bidders, under federal rules, have an option to protest the award.
USA-RS, as it stands, will assume project control on April 1, one day after Bechtel SAIC's contract expires, say DOE officials. It would assume control about half way through the first year of the project's federal license review, which started in September. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has up to four years to decide on the application. Meanwhile, the lengthy and involved transition from one contractor to another could begin this year.

USA-RS’s duties include completing a detailed repository design, operating existing facilities at the Yucca Mountain site, and supporting construction management at the site – if the project moves forward. Many existing technical staff might be hired by USA-RS. It's customary in government-contract transitions to confine most personnel changes to only upper management.

The program's federal and contractor head count has dropped from about 2,750 workers about four years ago to about 1,700 workers recently, DOE spokesman Allen Benson says. Program officials, however, say employees needed to defend the license application and answer NRC questions will remain aboard.

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