RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - The Department of Energy awarded a new Hanford environmental cleanup contract worth up to $10 billion over 10 years, it announced Thursday.
The Tri-City Herald reports under the current contract, almost 1,700 workers are cleaning up contamination primarily in the center of the massive nuclear reservation and finishing up environmental cleanup by the Columbia River.
The winning bidder for the new Hanford Central Plateau Cleanup Contract is a team of Aecom Management Services in Maryland; Fluor Federal Services in Greenville, South Carolina; and Atkins Nuclear Secured in Tennessee.
The team, called Central Plateau Cleanup Co., will do work similar to work being done at Hanford under the expiring contract of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co.
The work includes digging up contaminated soil and debris, tearing down defunct buildings with radioactive or hazardous chemical contamination, operating large, lined landfills for radioactive and hazardous chemical waste, and cleaning up contaminated groundwater.
The federal government is spending about $2.5 billion a year for environmental cleanup of the 580-square-mile (1,502-square-kilometer) Hanford site, with most work done by privately owned contracting teams.
The nuclear reservation is contaminated from the production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
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