UT-Battelle—ORNL 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.