The Department of Energy’s $45-billion liquid waste contract award at the Hanford Site in Washington state has now spawned three lawsuits, two in Federal Claims Court and one in a federal appeals court.
Two of those are still live wires, including a March 26 protest of DOE’s second award of the decade-spanning liquid-waste work to Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C), a team led by BWX Technologies.
The other live case is an appeal by H2C of a now-concluded claims court lawsuit brought in June 2023 by losing bidder Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance (HTDA), an AtkinsRéalis Nuclear-led team. HTDA’s 2023 lawsuit got DOE’s first award thrown out, but the agency quickly pivoted to a new and brief competition that ended with the same result as the first, complete with another lawsuit.
The ball is in the winner’s court in the appeal, which at this point is concerned chiefly with whether the appeal should go on before the trial court works through the second protest. Even the Department of Justice has said, in filings with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that it should not.
H2C has until April 22 to make its next filing in the appeal, a few weeks later than recently scheduled, owing to a conflict on an attorney’s calendar. Unless the appeals court insists on maintaining jurisdiction, the new Claims Court lawsuit could steer the fate of the second Hanford award for the near future.
HTDA, which also includes Jacobs and Westinghouse, filed its second protest over DOE’s Integrated Tank Disposition Contract after the agency re-awarded the potentially 10-year, $45-billion pact to H2C on Feb. 29.
DOE’s first award to H2C, in April 2023, got thrown out by the Court of Federal Claims because the joint-venture, which also includes Amentum and Fluor, did not maintain its registration with the U.S. government’s procurement database, the System for Award Management.
Until the new lawsuit in the claims court plays out, the incumbent Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions remains in charge of managing the 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste held in underground tanks at Hanford.
The new integrated contract would combine work done under the Washington River contract with operations of the Bechtel-built Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, designed to convert liquid radioactive waste into a glass-like form.
Amentum and Jacobs planned in the second half of 2024 to merge into a single publicly controlled company that will be majority owned by Jacobs and Jacobs shareholders.
