The National Nuclear Security Administration still had not at deadline released the final solicitation for the potentially $28-billion, $10-year contract to manage its two big nuclear-weapons production sites, but more information is percolating up through industry about the players interested in the deal.
With the envisioned start of the transition from the Bechtel-led incumbent, Consolidated National Security, eight months away, the list of likely teams looks something like this, according to industry people:
- BWX Technologies, the former incumbent, with Huntington Ingalls Industries and Honeywell.
- Fluor Corp, Irving, Texas, with Amentum, Germantown, Md., and SOC, Chantilly, Va. The latter is the physical security provider for the incumbent.
- Bechtel National, the senior partner from the incumbent, is said to be considering a bid.
- Jacobs, Dallas, is likewise mulling a bid.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in June that it would not pick up any more options on the roughly $2-billion-a-year contract it awarded to Consolidated Nuclear Security in 2014.
The incumbent will turn over the keys on Oct. 1, 2021, but it will remain at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to continue building the Uranium Processing Facility there. That next-generation factory for nuclear weapons secondary stages is supposed to be finished by 2025, the NNSA has said.
Y-12 is the NNSA’s defense-uranium center. Besides making secondary stages, the site prepares highly enriched uranium for processing into fuel for naval warships and submarines. Pantex, in Amarillo, Texas, is where the agency services and modernizes all U.S. nuclear weapons.
