Northrop on team picked to manage nuclear site

A team that includes Northrop Grumman Newport News has landed a contract estimated at $4 billion to manage a federal Department of Energy nuclear facility in South Carolina.

The business that won the award, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC, was formed in May by Northrop Grumman, Fluor Corp. and Honeywell International to compete for the contract. The five-year contract has five one-year options that make it potentially worth $8 billion.

The contract covers site management and operations of the Energy Department's Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., a 310-square-mile facility that manages the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and other nuclear materials.

The site houses the country's only tritium-production operation, part of the U.S. military's weapons program.

The facility also has a federally funded national lab involved in varied research, including on the use of hydrogen-based energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuel.

For the shipbuilder, which assembles nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for the Navy, the award offers a new business opportunity, said Doug Stitzel, director of Department of Energy programs for the Newport News yard.

It positions the company for what Stitzel said is a coming renaissance for nuclear power as the nation searches for energy alternatives to wean itself from foreign oil sources.

"We believe that there will be significantly more nuclear power plants that are going to be constructed and operated, and we're getting ready for that," he said Friday.

The company, he said, could build modular components for nuclear plants, much as it does for carriers and subs.

Stitzel said a handful of senior managers from Newport News' nuclear operations organization will relocate to South Carolina to work the contract. At the shipyard, they oversee the handling of nuclear fuel and the overhaul and refueling of carriers.

Jon W. Glass, (757) 446-2318, jon.glass@pilotonline.com