At the Department of Energy’s request, bidders on major nuclear cleanup contracts at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio have agreed to keep their bids on the table for 60 days longer than planned, industry sources said this week.
Within the past week, DOE procurement officials asked teams to keep their contract offers for the Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride (DUF6) Conversion Facilities at Paducah and the Portsmouth Decontamination & Decommissioning Contract open up to 330 days, rather than the initial 270-day period, executives with separate companies told Exchange Monitor this week.
The first is a combined landlord services and DUF6 contract that covers both Portsmouth and Paducah.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is offering a pass-through arrangement on the DUF6 contract so that the DUF6 lines can make depleted uranium tetrafluoride, or DUF4, for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
DUF4 is the feedstock for depleted uranium metal, used to modernize the nuclear weapons stockpile, and a material the U.S. will run out of in the late 2020s unless domestic production is established, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The extension basically means the offers remain good through June 1, rather than April 1.
DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center occasionally asks for extensions in big procurements. Stretching out the deadline involves revising one line within DOE’s standard form 33, the other industry source said Monday. The form says the stipulated price is good “if this offer is accepted within” a set number of days from the request for proposals deadline.
The DUF6 contract is currently held by Mid-America Conversion Services, a consortium of Atkins, Westinghouse and Fluor.
