A joint venture led by Virginia-based BWX Technologies has landed a potential $21-billion, long-term contract from the Department of Energy to manage radioactive liquid waste and do other work at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
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, Savannah River Mission Completion 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.
Under the master indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, the new team 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 SRMC team will also take over operation of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, currently run on a temporary basis by Parsons, which constructed 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.
The contractor is expected to employ roughly 2,500 workers. About a quarter (24%) 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.
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 become undone 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, Savannah River Remediation 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.
