The Energy Department is likely to extend the nearly expired contract for environmental management services at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico ahead of awarding a new deal, an observer said Thursday.
Lab management and operations prime Los Alamos National Security holds a two-year, $230 million “bridge” legacy nuclear cleanup contract that ends on Sept. 30. There has been no formal announcement regarding the next contract; DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said this week it does not comment on ongoing procurements.
LANL Director Charles McMillan acknowledged recently that the contract process is taking longer than anticipated.
“We had expected that the announcement would have already been made on that,” McMillan, who will retire at the end of 2017, told the Los Alamos County Council last week, “but it’s going to be a little bit in the future.”
The Energy Department had earlier projected the contract would be awarded from June to August of this year. That might now not happen until October, industry sources said recently.
The observer this week said DOE is likely waiting for more certainty regarding completing treatment of dozens of drums of waste that will eventually to be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
A container of remediated nitrate salts from Los Alamos blew open at WIPP in February 2014, releasing radiation and forcing the transuranic waste storage mine to close for nearly three years. The laboratory held 60 drums similarly packed with a combustible mixture of nitrate salts and organic kitty litter. Los Alamos National Security is charged with the project to mix the material in each drum with an inert substance to prevent future combustion incidents. Processing began in May, and at last report LANL was about halfway through the project, the observer noted.
After that, another 29 drums of unremediated nitrate salts must be treated. On June 30, the laboratory informed DOE that the completion date for the entire project was being pushed back from Sept. 30 to April 10, 2018.
Los Alamos National Security is a partnership of the University of California and DOE contractors Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, and AECOM. None have said whether they are seeking the follow-on cleanup contract, which could be worth more than $1.5 billion over a decade.
Energy Department contractors Fluor and CH2M are believed to be among the bidders for the new contract, another industry source said recently.
The contract would cover management of waste produced at the lab from 1970 to 1998. Management of more recent waste remains under the purview of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees LANL.
