The Energy Department announced on Sept. 15 it would extend the current contract for management and operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico through September 2020.
DOE employed three of the available five years of options remaining in its contract with Nuclear Waste Partnership, according to a late afternoon press release.
AECOM AND BWXT are partners in the WIPP prime, along with subcontractor AREVA Federal Services. They received the contract in April 2012, and took over operations that October of the nation’s only permanent deep underground repository for transuranic waste.
Less than two years later, an underground vehicle and fire and subsequent radiation release closed the storage mine for nearly three years. WIPP reopened last December after an extended recovery process, and began to receive shipments from other DOE sites in April. As of last week, it had taken in 60 shipments from four other facilities.
The base five-year WIPP contract was worth $1.3 billion; the three-year extension will add about $928 million to that amount, a DOE spokesman said.
“This negotiated option will give Nuclear Waste Partnership the necessary time to continue the progress they have achieved through the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant recovery and resumption of shipments,” Todd Shrader, manager of the department’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in the release. “The enhancements to the contract are expected to ensure WIPP is operated safely and efficiently in both waste emplacement and mining operations.”
Nuclear Waste Partnership received $11.3 million in WIPP award fees for fiscal 2016: which reflects 84 percent of the total amount available.
The contract modification indicates Nuclear Waste Partnership will be eligible for up to $7.6 million in award fees for fiscal 2018, the first year of the extension. Under the prior version of the contract, it appears the contractor would have been eligible for a lesser amount, $7.1 million. The difference could be attributable at least in part to changes in the scope of work. The contractor has the potential to earn more than $22.9 million during the three-year extension period.
The modified agreement calls for appointment of a chief mining officer at WIPP, a position that officials mentioned last week at the department’s National Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va. Other components of the updated contract include cost-savings incentives to be divided among the contractor and its employees and NWP’s pledge to enhances its investment in the region.
The contractor will issue a monthly status report on operations. The amount of the NWP fee geared toward the community will increase from 2% to 5%. The contract modification also notes that a three-day international symposium, which will also address mine safety, will be held in Carlsbad in 2020.
The contractor is also assigned to draw up a five-year WIPP operations master plan by next March, and to update the document every six months. Central to the plan is developing a broad-scope transuranic waste disposition map that would, among other data, identify current and projected waste at producer facilities.
