A joint venture led by Virginia-based BWX Technologies this week landed a potential $21-billion, long-term contract from the Department of Energy to manage liquid radioactive cleanup and other work at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the agency said.
DOE’s award of the Integrated Mission Completion Contract to Savannah River Mission Completion, announced in a Wednesday press release from Office of Environmental Management (EM), comes a day after the office issued an $8.5-billion remediation contract to an Amentum-led team at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) was picked from a field of four bidders. In addition to BWXT, the other partners are Fluor and Amentum, while the teaming subcontractors are WesWorks and DBD. EM issued the award almost 13 months after releasing the request for proposals on Oct. 1, 2020.
It is the second time that a BWXT-led venture has won a competition for EM’s next Savannah River Site liquid waste contract.
Barring a successful challenge, an experience BWXT knows only too well from recent EM competitions, SRMC would take over from the incumbent, Amentum-led Savannah River Remediation. The current contractor has been on the job since July 2009. Thanks to various extensions the contract, now valued at $7.5-billion, is set to expire Jan. 31. BWXT is a member of the incumbent team, as are Bechtel and Jacobs.
“DOE seems to be happy with the status quo,” in that the cast of contractors tends to stay mostly the same, said one source by phone Thursday of this week’s awards at Savannah River and Oak Ridge. The source understands that debrief sessions, where the agency explains its rationale for the awards, are expected on both contracts the week of Nov. 8.
Under the big indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, SRMC will run liquid waste stabilization and disposal, including cesium removal and operation of the tank farms as well as the Defense Waste Processing Facility that converts high-level radioactive waste into glass. The new team will also take over operation of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, currently run on a temporary basis by Parsons, which built the plant. Nuclear materials management and stabilization could be added to the new contractor’s tasks.
There are about 35 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored in 43 underground tanks at the Savannah River Site.
Like the Oak Ridge contract, DOE can tack on another five years to complete task orders at Savannah River, effectively making the deal a 15-year contract, an agency spokesperson confirmed Friday.
The contractor is expected to employ roughly 2,500 workers. About a quarter of the current workforce — most of whom are expected to migrate over from the incumbent to the new contractor when it takes charge — are union-represented, DOE said in its release.
“This is a strategically important win for BWXT and demonstrates our ability to address some of the most complex environmental challenges in the nation,” Ken Camplin, president of BWXT’s Nuclear Services Group, said in a Thursday press release. “We intend to work with our SRMC teammates, our DOE customer, the regulatory authorities and the community in making a significant impact on waste management at SRS for many years to come.”
EM has been looking for another Savannah River liquid-waste contractor for years. A BWXT-led group was initially awarded a 10-year, $4.7-billion contract for liquid waste management at the site in October 2017, only to see the deal unwind after the Government Accountability Office upheld a protest in February 2018 brought by a rival bidder. EM would eventually cancel that version of the Savannah River liquid waste procurement in February 2019 and leave the incumbent in place.
Likewise in July 2020, the agency suspended and later withdrew a $13-billion tank closure contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state that was initially won by a BWXT-led group.
Meanwhile, there remains another big prize floating out there in the near term at the 310-square mile Savannah River complex along the Georgia state line.
In a notice posted Oct. 4, DOE said to expect issuance of a final solicitation for the management and operations replacement contract at the site, which includes both EM and National Nuclear Security Administration facilities, in anywhere from 15-to-60 days. Assuming 60 days, the RFP should be out by Dec. 3. The operations contract has been held since August 2008 by Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. The deal, currently valued at $15.8 billion, is set to expire in September 2022.
