D&D OF HANFORD’S RETIRED PRODUCTION REACTORS: AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEMONSTRATE BEST COMMERCIAL PROCUREMENT PRACTICES

One of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) strategic objectives of the 1990s was to identify ways to bring best business practices of the private sector (i.e., best commercial practices) to the management and execution of the department’s Environmental Management (EM) Program. The decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) of nuclear reactors is an area of common interest in both the commercial electric utility industry and in the DOE complex. The nuclear utility industry has a number of commercial nuclear plants in various stages of decommissioning – pre-shutdown planning, deactivation, decontamination, partial dismantlement, or completed demolition to a brown-field or green-field condition. The DOE EM Program has a number of shutdown reactors ready for D&D, including eight of the nine shutdown plutonium production reactors on the Hanford Site. In 1998, the DOE Office of Procurement and Assistance Management, in conjunction with the DOE Contractor Purchasing Council (CPC), conducted a benchmarking study to identify best commercial procurement practices that could be applied to DOE D&D projects. The benchmarking study included four commercial nuclear power plants that were in various stages of decommissioning. The study identified several new best commercial practices being used on commercial D&D projects, and confirmed a number of practices that are currently being used by DOE and its contractors. The CPC report, Benchmarking D&D Procurement Best Practices at Four Commercial Nuclea