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 set to expire by the end of September. Orano (formerly AREVA Federal Services) is also part of the team as a major subcontractor.
In September 2017, DOE exercised its option to retain Nuclear Waste Partnership for three more years as its five-year base period was about to end 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 waste emplacement 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 emails on whether it intends to pick up Nuclear Waste Partnership’s remaining two-year option at WIPP. Typically, DOE declines to comment on active procurements. If exercised, the final option would expire on Sept. 30, 2022.
It would be odd for DOE to remove its prime in the middle of a major infrastructure construction program, an industry source said Wednesday – in this case, building a new underground ventilation system at WIPP.
However, such a move would not be without precedent. The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week said it would not pick up Consolidated Nuclear Security’s contract to manage its Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and Pantex Plant in Texas. Consolidated Nuclear Security is led by Bechtel National, which also has the contract for construction of the multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant through mid-June had received 812 shipments of TRU waste since reopening. Last 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 recent DOE fee scorecard.
Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) favored termination of the NWP contract in 2014, Don Hancock, the organization’s nuclear waste safety director, said in a Tuesday email. “Nothing has happened since to show that it’s a competent contractor. But DOE continues to financially reward their poor performance,” he said.
Due to various factors, the largest being the reduced operations across the DOE weapons complex this spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic, WIPP is lagging well behind the waste emplacement projected by the Energy Department in a strategic plan published last year.
In the document, DOE said it expected the facility to receive 400 shipments during fiscal 2020, which started Oct. 1, 2019, and ends on Sept. 30. During fiscal 2019, the underground salt mine receive 315 shipments from the Idaho National Laboratory and other Energy Department sites.
But WIPP received only 123 shipments in first nine months of fiscal 2020.
Nuclear Waste Partnership said Thursday that in addition to the pandemic-related work reductions, shipments have been down in 2020 due to weather-related issues in early January, followed by the annual maintenance outage from early February to mid-March.
After reducing on-site staffing to perhaps a quarter of the normal 1,000 personnel starting in late March due to COVID-19, WIPP began Phase 1 of remobilization on June 1 and commenced Phase 2 on June 15. The Office of Environmental Management’s remobilization policy is a four-part process that starts with preplanning (Phase 0) and culminates with Phase 3, with on-site staffing approaching levels found prior to the pandemic.
Effort to Stop New WIPP Shaft Moves to New Mexico Supreme Court
The Southwest Research and Information Center this week appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court in an effort to halt construction of a new underground shaft at WIPP.
The case was filed with the state’s high court Monday after the New Mexico Court of Appeals on June 11 dismissed a stay request by the advocacy group.
The appeals court disagreed with SRIC’s basic premise – that the New Mexico Environment Department’s 180-day “temporary authorization” from April to start work on the shaft constitutes a de-facto final “administration action” that cannot be undone.
Finding that no final action has been taken by the state agency, Appeals Court Chief Judge Miles Hanisee and Judge Julie Vargas ruled in the four-page decision that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the challenge.
That final decision from NMED is still pending, with comments on the draft permit modification due Aug. 11. That will be followed by negotiations over the final permit language, which could take weeks, Hancock said.
In the April temporary approval, NMED Cabinet Secretary James Kenney said construction would have to be “reversed” if the state ultimately rejects plans for a new shaft.
Last August, WIPP management announced a $75 million award for a subcontractor, Harrison Western-Shaft Sinkers Joint Venture, to build the new underground utility shaft that would serve multiple purposes, including providing a new access point for people and equipment into the salt mine near the city of Carlsbad. The new shaft should be completed sometime in 2022, according to DOE.
Southwest Research wants any construction stayed until a formal decision from the state, calling it unrealistic and unwise for DOE to sink a 2,200-foot-deep shaft and accompanying “drifts,” or horizontal passageways, only to potentially undo the work if the final permit modification is rejected.
In the petition filed with the state Supreme Court, SRIC argued that the state permit and federal laws that created WIPP envisioned it receiving waste for only 25 years from its 1999 opening, which would be followed by up to 10 years for decommissioning and final closure. The advocacy group said the shaft is part of a multi-front effort to exceed the 175,600-cubic-meter cap on TRU waste disposal set by the 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act, and to keep the facility open until 2080.
