The former manager of the Hanford site's Richland Operations Office has joined Kurion to guide its deployment of a waste processing system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the company announced Monday.
Next month, Matthew McCormick will begin work as the project director for Kurion's provision of mobile water treatment at the plant severely damaged following Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The company's zeolite-based material is currently used in a processing system removing contaminants from water cycled through damaged reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Co. recently announced a separate contract for Kurion to provide its Mobile Processing System to reduce the concentration of strontium in tanks holding 400,000 metric tons of contaminated water on the site using a similar technology.
McCormick previously spent 26 years with the Department of Energy following his service in the Navy as a nuclear engineer. He held leadership positions at Rocky Flats, the Savannah River Site and Hanford before his appointment to manage the DOE's Richland operations in 2010.