The Energy Department announced Friday 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 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, 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 Friday.
“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 modified agreement calls for appointment of a chief mining officer at WIPP, a position officials had 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.
