Two megadollar Department of Energy nuclear cleanup contracts, together potentially worth more than $50 billion, could be awarded by early 2023, a top Office of Environmental Management procurement executive told a gathering in Santa Fe, N.M., Wednesday.
The Integrated Tank Disposition Contract for the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract for Portsmouth Site in Ohio are “in evaluation” and awards could occur late this year or early next year, Angela Watmore told a meeting of DOE citizens advisory board chairs. The meeting streamed via YouTube.
Watmore is special adviser for acquisition for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
The Integrated Tank Disposition business is potentially worth $45 billion over 10 years and effectively combines operation of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at Hanford with the tank management and closure contract.
Bechtel has the contract to build the Waste Treatment Plant, designed to solidify radioactive tank waste into glass logs. Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions has the current tank contract.
There are about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste at Hanford left over from its decades as a plutonium production facility for nuclear weapons.
A request for proposals for the integrated tank contract was issued in October 2021. In May of this year, DOE issued the solicitation for the potential 10-year $5.87-billion cleanup contract at the former gaseous diffusion plant complex near Piketon, Ohio. Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth is the incumbent.
Because DOE contractors typically hire about 96% of the incumbent hardhat-wearing workforce at the nuclear properties, “what we are really buying is the management team,” Watmore said during her presentation. That is why management weighs heavily in DOE’s selection criteria, she added.
With a $3-billion contract awarded in July for a new prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and a new management contract for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina at least a couple of years away, Hanford integrated tanks and Portsmouth cleanup are among a dwindling number of $1-billion-plus contract awards expected in the short term.
Watmore did not offer any timeline for award of the potential 10-year, $2.9-billion Portsmouth Paducah Operations and Site Mission Support contract, which includes depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) work at Portsmouth and the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
In addition to smaller contracts, the Office of Environmental Management continues to accept new remediation projects from the Office of Naval Reactors, Watmore said.
Most nuclear cleanup contracts being issued these days utilize Environmental Management’s End State Contracting Model, which is basically an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity deal, “no more no less,” Watmore said.
Setting the contract up this way is “about chunking the work down into definable pieces of work,” Watmore said. The End State Model has helped contractors by standardizing the bid proposal process. Previously, developing a 10-year proposal in advance could cost a contractor team more than $5 million, said the acquisition official.
