DOE Cancels Contract for Study on Radioactive Scrap

The Energy Department has canceled a contract with a company hired to study the impact of recycling scrap metal from nuclear sites. Environmentalists and an influential lawmaker had raised concerns of possible bias, citing the company's previous work involving recycled scrap metal.

Those critics contended San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., has profited from the scrap metal recycling business.

"To avoid any impression or appearance of conflict, because of the seriousness of the issue, both SAIC and DOE have agreed not to move forward" on the study, department spokesman Joe Davis said.

According to an official statement by SAIC, the company states that it has not received official notification of a task order termination from DOE to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the recycling of materials at DOE sites in Oakridge, Tenn. 

Prior to being awarded this contract, SAIC fully disclosed all information to DOE regarding previous DOE contracts and relationships with the NRC.

SAIC maintains that there is no conflict of interest with work performed for past or present contracts with DOE.

The company had worked on a large recycling project as a subcontractor at the department's Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear reservation. Its job was to help the primary contractor navigate the regulatory process involved in recycling scrap metal before the Clinton administration imposed a ban on that practice last year.

While the ban remains, the department announced this month it was studying that policy. It hired the company to conduct an environmental impact statement looking at the effects of both maintaining and lifting the moratorium on sales of scrap metal left at nuclear weapons facilities.

Supporters of recycling scrap metals from the nation's nuclear complex say it is a useful way to dispose of materials as the Cold War-era plants are decommissioned. They argue levels of contamination are too low to pose a health and safety threat.

Critics of such sales have argued that metals with any trace of contamination should not go into general commerce.

"It's good that DOE is rethinking this," said Dan Guttman, an attorney who has represented nuclear workers. "It shows that the contract award process requires public visibility to ensure public integrity."

A leading Capitol Hill opponent of the contract was Rep. John Dingell, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In a letter Tuesday to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Dingell wrote that the company would be preparing a study "on a matter it has been promoting for almost two decades."

Dingell, D-Mich., also noted that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year dropped the company as a contractor on a project in which the company was helping the NRC write rules dealing with recycled scrap metal.

Dingell said the NRC cited an "organizational conflict of interest."