The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Wednesday released its final request for proposals for a 10-year contract to manage and operate the Los Alamos National Laboratory: the storied nuclear weapons research site that will become the nation’s primary plutonium-pit-production facility under the next prime contractor’s watch.
Those interested must submit a bid by Dec. 11, the NNSA said in its solicitation.
The final solicitation is for a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract comprising a five-year base and five one-year options. The contract includes a four-month transition period. Incumbent lab manager Los Alamos National Security’s (LANS) contract is set to expire Sept. 30, 2018.
LANS, a consortium headed by the University of California and lead industry partner Bechtel National, has managed the lab since 2006 under a contract worth roughly $2 billion a year.
The University of California has all but confirmed it will bid on the follow-on contract, though with a different set of industry partners than those assembled for LANS. Besides Bechtel, these include BWX Technologies, which attended the industry day the Department of Energy hosted in advance of dropping the final solicitation, and AECOM, which did not.
“The University of California has an exemplary record of excellence and public service in scientific and technological management of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) over the many decades it has been involved in its stewardship,” a University of California spokesperson wrote in a statement Wednesday.
For most of the lab’s 70-plus-year history, the University of California has managed Los Alamos National Lab alone. The institution spearheaded the LANS partnership after DOE in 2000 decided to privatize lab operations.
After a series of nuclear-safety and management mishaps, including a shoddy nuclear-waste-packing job that led to an underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant disposal facility near Carlsbad, N.M., DOE announced last year it would not pick up options on LANS’ contract that would have kept the incumbent on the job into the 2020s.
Also in the running for the follow-on contract is the University of Texas System. The University of New Mexico has also expressed interest, though it has not said whether it would bid as a prime or attach itself to another team’s bid.
