The Energy Department Office of Environmental Management is expected to decide soon whether to keep Nuclear Waste Partnership in place as the prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The joint partnership between Amentum (formerly AECOM Management Services) and BWX Technologies is working under the first option of its $2.4 billion contract that started in October 2012 and is scheduled to expire by the end of September.
In September 2017, DOE exercised its option to keep NWP in place for at least three more years as its five-year base period was about to expire for management of the nation’s only permanent deep underground repository for transuranic waste. At the time the vendor was in the early months of restarting operations after the salt mine was forced out of service for about three years following a February 2014 underground vehicle fire and subsequent radiation release.
The Energy Department did not immediately return an email Monday on whether it intends to pick up Nuclear Waste Partnership’s remaining two-year option at WIPP. The final option expires Sept. 30, 2022.
The facility has received 812 shipments of TRU waste since reopening. Earlier this month, Nuclear Waste Partnership earned 83%, or $14.3 million, of a potential $17.3 million fee for its work during fiscal 2019, according to a DOE fee scorecard.
Besides waste from shuttered Cold War nuclear weapons production, WIPP will also hold transuranic waste produced by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s soon-to-begin program to produce new plutonium pits for future ballistic-missile warheads. The Energy Department estimates that the transuranic waste from pits, which has first priority to go down into the mine, could take up about half the remaining space in WIPP.
