CH2M HILL

Siting, Licensing & Permitting

CH2M HILL provides permitting services to ensure a nuclear site can be constructed and operated without undue risk to public health and safety. Our experience with licensing and permitting for nuclear sites includes the successful submission of the first-ever Early Site Permit for the DOE. Permitting services include evaluation of severe accident and severe accident mitigation alternatives (SAMA) and development of emergency plans, environmental reports, and site safety analysis reports.

CH2M HILL has provided several hundred NEPA Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) and Environmental Assessments (EAs) for all of the major land management agencies in the United States, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the Department of Energy (DOE).

CH2M HILL's project experience allows our environmental planners to develop successful strategies for cost-effectively integrating federal environmental review with state environmental documentation and permitting requirements. Our experience with complex nuclear waste processing facilities provides the expertise required to perform design reviews, develop commissioning plans, and determine and implement training and qualification requirements of operations and maintenance staff.

Nuclear Liability Management

As the U.S. government's most successful contractor for eliminating domestic nuclear liabilities, we recently completed the $7B decommissioning and cleanup of one of the nation's most dangerous nuclear facilities - the former Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado - the largest nuclear decommissioning project completed anywhere in the world. Eliminating this Cold War legacy involved the hot deactivation, decommissioning, decontamination, and demolition of the 400-acre, 800-building "factory" for manufacturing plutonium pits for the U.S. nuclear arsenal - a factory shut down in mid-stream in 1989.

CH2M HILL's ability to identify, assess, and effectively manage uncertainty is a key determinant of our overall ability to complete accelerated risk and threat reduction projects safely, securely, on schedule and within cost. Accordingly, a key component of our overall risk management process is to provide our clients and CH2M HILL management with the tools needed to identify and respond to uncertainties as they arise, without adverse impact to the project's critical path or actual cost of work performed. To that end, risk management is a fundamental component of our overall approach to the integration and execution of nuclear liability elimination projects.

Our innovative, aggressive approach to eliminating Rocky Flats facility, completed in 10 years with no serious injuries and no loss of weapons material, has resulted in CH2M HILL being selected for continued major decommissioning activities across the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure - including the Mound Plant decommissioning (electronic components, plutonium, tritium); the Hanford site (53 million gallons of high-level waste from spent nuclear fuel processing, uranium/plutonium production reactors); the Savannah River Site (plutonium processing facilities); and the Idaho National Laboratory (experimental production reactors, spent fuel handling and safe storage, special nuclear material stewardship and disposition, and high-level solid and liquid wastes from spent nuclear fuel processing). CH2M HILL also provides nuclear infrastructure decommissioning/elimination services for DOE at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, the Nevada Test Site, and the Y-12 Plant.

Facility Design & Construction

CH2M HILL provides design and construction management services on all types of power projects including nuclear, coal, natural gas, oil, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. For more than 55 years, CH2M HILL has provided services to more than 200 utility and energy service providers, and we have extensive experience working on nuclear facility design and safety issues and interacting with industry, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and other U.S. and international regulatory agencies. As a cornerstone of our approach to delivering projects in a safe quality manner is our NQA-1 based Quality Assurance program. This program has successfully passed several NQA-1 based audits, including the U.S. Department of Energy, NUPIC for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Bechtel National, and BWXT Pantex. Our QA program also satisfies all the requirements of ISO 9001. In addition, CH2M HILL currently has design reliability assurance programs (D-RAP), which includes 10CFR Part 21 compliance.

CH2M HILL's wholly owned subsidiary Lockwood Greene has three decades of experience performing conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design services for the U.S. Department of Energy at 18 DOE sites around the nation. Founded in 1832, Lockwood Greene is America's oldest professional services firm in continuous operation for industrial and power engineering and construction.

CH2M HILL's IDC subsidiary is the world's premier clean-room architect-engineer-construction management firm, and has applied this expertise to the design of bio-safety level (BSL) 2, 3, 3A, 3Ag, and 4 laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland (BSL 3 and 4 Laboratories); Pacific Rim Vaccine Development Center, (BSL 2, 3, 3Ag, & 4 laboratories); Los Alamos National Laboratory, (BSL 3 and 3A Laboratories) and Walter Reed Army Hospital, Institute of Research, (BSL 2 and 3 Laboratories).

To meet the stringent regulatory requirements for radioactive waste landfill design and to ensure long-term protection of human health and the environment, CH2M HILL has designed and constructed several disposal facilities on behalf of the Department of Energy, including low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities at the Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation, and the Hanford Site.

Large Program Management

Coordinating large diverse projects for nuclear facilities requires strong capabilities in defining the work, packaging the work for subcontracting, determining the best contractual vehicle to be used, and selecting the best firm to conduct the work activities. We have managed large nuclear programs totaling up to $1.4 billion per year for the U.S. Department of Energy and other government and commercial clients.

CH2M HILL is an industry leader in program management and integration for large nuclear programs as well as in executing specific, end-point defined projects. As program manager, CH2M HILL frequently complements our own resources and capabilities with those of other firms to deliver the most sensible and valuable benefits for the customer. By bringing together the best contractors and coordinating their contributions to program and project activities, CH2M HILL-led teams achieve cost efficiencies and schedule control while our firm conducts ongoing verification of quality. In short, we provide a single point of overall accountability and responsibility to the client and manage the rapidly changing resource requirements and schedule changes encountered during various stages of the work.

Research Nuclear Reactors Decommissioning

CH2M HILL provides a full range of services for NRC-licensed research reactor decommissioning. Our services include site assessments, initial characterization, radiological surveys, safety oversight, regulatory compliance, decontamination and dismantlement, waste disposition, and final NRC license termination. Of note is our recent, successful decontamination and decommissioning experience associated with three NRC -licensed University research reactors-Georgia Tech, University of Virginia, and University of Michigan-as well as our own IOTECH nuclear/ radiological facility for the sterilization of medical instruments, which we operated in Colorado under NRC license and successfully decommissioned and free released.

Spent Nuclear Fuel Expertise

CH2M HILL is currently handling, storing, and transporting spent nuclear fuel for the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Idaho Cleanup Project. This includes wet-to-dry transfer, consolidation and storage of 3,578 units of spent nuclear fuel at the Idaho National Laboratory site, as well as the receipt and safe handling/storage of foreign and domestic research reactor fuel. Our nuclear materials handling expertise includes development and implementation of Security and Nuclear Material Control and Accountability plans to ensure compliant material handling. We developed Authorization Basis requirements with subsequent approval by DOE, and DOE Operational Readiness Reviews in accordance with DOE Order 425.1.