NSTec Team Earns Northrop Grumman Award for TRU Waste Project

November 17, 2009

NSTec Chief Operating Officer Mike Butchko (far left) and Environmental Management Project Manager Teri Browdy (female, center) join the TRU Project Team (from left to right): Patrick Arnold, Robert Stueckrath, Stefan Duke, Rick Wagner and John Ciucci. Not pictured: Mike McCullough.

The Nevada Test Site Transuranic (TRU) Project team has been awarded the President’s Award from Northrop Grumman for its successful completion of a high-risk radioactive waste repackaging project.

Northrop Grumman Technical Services President Jim Cameron presented the TRU team the award in October for safely processing 162 highly radioactive waste containers, one month ahead of schedule. The project solved a 35-year-old legacy waste problem. Northrop Grumman is the managing partner for National Security Technologies (NSTec), the management and operating contractor for the Nevada Test Site.

“The project team constructed and started up a nuclear facility and safely completed processing of highly radioactive waste generated at a national weapons laboratory, in under two years. Meeting this highly aggressive schedule is a first in the DOE complex, ” said NSTec President Steve Younger.

The TRU project, which the U.S. Department of Energy called on NSTec to perform in 2007, involved building a new facility, creating a new method for processing highly radioactive waste, and repackaging hundreds of boxes of materials – all within a strict set of guidelines and deadlines set by the State of Nevada. The TRU Project team saved millions of dollars on the project by upgrading an existing facility and met those deadlines while still maintaining a safety record unparalleled in the National Nuclear Security Administration complex.

The TRU team received one of six President’s Awards presented by Northrop Grumman, and Cameron hailed the achievement as an example of the outstanding work done by all its partners every day.