From Staff Reports
WC Monitor
6/19/2015
The Department of Energy this week selected North Wind Solutions LLC from among seven bidders to manage and operate the agency’s Transuranic Waste Processing Center in Oak Ridge. The contract has a potential value up to $123.9 million if all options are chosen. The performance period has a three-year base, with one two-year option. Bids for the contract were due in December, and DOE had originally planned to award and complete transition by July 1. However, earlier this month it granted a six-month extension to incumbent Wastren Advantage.
North Wind, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cook Inlet Region Inc. and small and disadvantaged contractor, is based in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The company will be responsible for processing contact-handled and remote-handled transuranic wastes at Oak Ridge, as well as supporting the certification and eventual disposal of the radioactive wastes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
For the past couple of years, North Wind has supported the work at the Transuranic Waste Processing Center under a subcontract to Wastren Advantage. According to DOE, the North Wind contract contains firm-fixed-price and cost-plus-award-fee contract line items, as well as an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity line item. Most of the TRU waste processed at the Oak Ridge facility is a legacy of nuclear reactor operations at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but it also includes contaminated soils from Nuclear Fuel Services at Erwin, Tenn.
