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.
The final request for bids on the contract will be released “shortly,” Robert Raines, the NNSA associate administrator for acquisition and project management said Thursday during a webcast presentation co-hosted by the Washington-based non-government groups, the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance and the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Raines would not be drawn on exactly when the agency would drop the final request for proposals. The NNSA contemplates a contract with a five-year base and five one-year options, according to a fee-summary spreadsheet appended to the agency’s draft solicitation from August.
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.
Wayne Barber and Dan Leone contributed to this report from Washington.
