BNFL Inc. is expanding its Richland office, turning it into a headquarters for much of its nationwide Department of Energy operations.

The company held a reception Thursday at its new office at 2345 Stevens Drive in Richland to show off where it moved in September from its last much smaller office on northern George Washington Way.

The move came as BNFL transferred its national-level project services operation from Denver to Richland, increasing its Tri-Cities staff to 65 from about 30. BNFL hopes to expand its Richland office with additional DOE and commercial nuclear-related work, corporate officials said Thursday.

However, BNFL kept a Richland office, which worked as a subcontractor on various Hanford and other DOE projects. Nationwide, the company obtained major contracts at DOE sites at Idaho Falls, Oak Ridge, Savannah River and elsewhere.

Then DOE told BNFL it wanted the company's national-level office in charge of its cleanup project to be located next to one of those sites, and BNFL selected Richland, said Philip Strawbridge, BNFL Inc.'s president.

The expanded Richland office now is BNFL Inc.'s headquarters for managing projects, engineering, budget analyses, production of technological reports and handling contracts and procurements for its nuclear-related operations in the United States.

Besides its DOE projects, BNFL handles some commercial reactor work, including the decommissioning of the Big Rock Point reactor in Michigan.

Last month, BNFL won a $5 million contract from Fluor Hanford to design and build equipment to remove highly radioactive sludge from Hanford's K West Basin.

Now, BNFL plans to eventually bid on some upcoming decommissioning work at Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant.

And it plans to be on a team bidding to tear down the Fast Flux Test Facility, said Chris Burrows, BNFL's Richland office's general manager. Only so-called "small businesses" with less than 500 employees can lead the teams expected to bid on the FFTF work. BNFL, which nationwide is much bigger than a small business, would be a junior partner on such a bidding team.

Burrows and Strawbridge declined to say which company BNFL might team with to compete for the FFTF contract.