UT-Battelle, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Technical and Administrative Support

Sigma Science provided technical and administrative support to the Fissile Materials Disposition Program and various U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Sigma provided services under a $2.4M four-and-a-half-year contract, awarded in May 2014. Tasks performed under the successfully completed contract include:

• Technical support (e.g., operations, safety basis, engineering)
• Condition evaluation and potential for alternative uses for:
• Actinide processing and actinide fuel fabrication.
• Plutonium and other transuranic waste utilization.
• Actinide materials management.
• Project management and scheduling activities, which included:
• Development of project work schedules.
• Critical path workflow assessments.
• Program schedule maintenance and improvement.
• Development of project controls, budgeting, and scheduling activities.
• Project progress reporting.
• Project cost oversight (e.g., tracking all funding, subcontracts, projections, and expenditures).
• Cost estimation and analysis.
• Linguistic support (including translation, interpretation, and document processing).
• Program administrative support services.

Key contract accomplishments under this contract include:

• Provided Fissile Materials Disposition Program technical support at ORNL (including support for the Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor Plant (GT-MHR) project).
• Provided support for U.S./Japan plutonium management.
• Provided international support for Russian travel and engagement and global plutonium management.
• Provided support for NA-21 Kazakhstan and NA-26 Plutonium roundtables.
• Provided technical resources that were part of the High Flux Isotope Reactor Safety Basis Team that independently reviewed the HFIR offsite dispersion analysis calculation.
• Supported the DOE and ORNL by developing a white paper as the basis for assessing proliferation resistance and physical protection for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant Very High-Temperature Reactor.
• Supported ORNL and the NRC in revising the NRC Standard Review Plan (SRP, NUREG-0800) with design-specific review standards and developing safety evaluation report templates (to address pending reviews of pre-applications and license applications for advanced reactor technologies, including small modular reactors using a risk-informed performance-based review approach).
• Supported ORNL with analyses for nuclear materials attractiveness issues.
• Helped ORNL address reactor-use options and associated issues for plutonium disposition and close-out of the GT-MHR plant U.S.-Russian Cooperative Agreement, reviewing the final gas-turbine development testing deliverables.
• Provided technical reviews, analysis, consultation, and project management support for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Program.