The Department of Energy plans to extend, by five more years until April 11, 2028, business deals with two privately-held disposal sites that occasionally take radioactive waste from the federal agency, according to procurement notices published Monday.
The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management published a “justification for other than full and open competition” for certain indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity agreements with EnergySolutions in Clive, Utah and Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas.
EnergySolutions is the only firm capable of disposing of 11e.(2) byproduct materials generated prior to 1978 as defined by the Atomic Energy Act and Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material or TENORM. The latter tends to be naturally occurring radioactive material that has been concentrated through manufacturing or processing, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Waste Control Specialists is the only firm capable of disposing of Class B low-level radioactive waste and mixed low-level waste, as well as Class C low-level and mixed waste, DOE said in its companion postings in SAM.gov.
“In practice, the vast majority of task orders under the Disposal IDIQs [indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity orders] can only be awarded to one firm or the other,” DOE said in the note.
Soliciting bid proposals “would merely waste government and contractor resources generating and evaluating full proposals from these two companies and other businesses “that mistakenly believe that this is a viable business opportunity,” according to the Monday notices.
A request for information last year did not turn up any viable alternatives.
Perma-Fix Environmental submitted a 90-page document that “admitted incapability” but “encouraged changing the requirements to allow disposal at facilities not owned by the contractors, such as DOE’s disposal property at the Nevada National Security Site. The agency declined to make that change, according to the notices.
