WASHINGTON — The secretary of energy must approve the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to let one company manage the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, for up to 20 years, the head of the nuclear-weapons agency said here Wednesday.
Details of the cost-plus-fixed-fee contract were published on April 28. The draft solicitation included a five-year base period with three five-year option periods.
But there is a catch: the last two option periods are marked “pending approval.”
According to NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby, that means the secretary of energy and possibly other federal officials must sign off on the options before they make it into the NNSA’s final Pantex request for proposals (RFP).
“The secretary has to approve that,” Hruby told the Exchange Monitor after testifying before the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee. “It’s a procurement regulation and we’ve had initial conversations” but NNSA officials feel “pretty optimistic” the provisions will be approved, Hruby said.
“In general, we’d like them [contracts], for stability reasons, to be as long as we can,” Hruby said.
Comments on the draft RFP for the Pantex contract are due May 11, according to a notice appended to the draft in April.
The NNSA is splitting up the joint management contract that now covers Pantex, the agency’s centralized weapons maintenance depot, and the Y-12 National Security Site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the factory for uranium-fueled nuclear-weapon secondary stages.
Bechtel National-led Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) is the incumbent, under a contract awarded in 2014. CNS is under contract at both Pantex and Y-12 through fiscal year 2024. The government holds options to keep CNS at Y-12 through fiscal year 2027 and at Pantex through fiscal year 2025.
In February, at the Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit near Washington, Hruby said the competition for a standalone Y-12 contract will start about a year after the Pantex procurement began.
