The Department of Energy seeks industry input about a long-term contract to design, build, license and operate a federally owned interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel, according to a notice released last week.
Responses to the request for information are due Sept. 6, the Friday after the U.S. Labor Day holiday. DOE released the request July 1. A draft performance work statement appended to the request said the contract could last 10 years or more but did not say when work might start.
“DOE believes the siting, design, licensing, construction, startup, and initial operation of a federal [consolidated interim storage facility] will take over a decade from when DOE first receives a year of full appropriations for a consolidated interim storage program,” the agency wrote in the request. “Therefore, DOE is currently considering [a] term of 10 years with additional options to continue operation.”
DOE notionally plans to open a federally owned interim storage facility by 2040 and to open a permanent deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, akin to the failed Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, by 2070, officials have said.
As is typical for DOE nuclear contracts, competing companies are welcomed to form new joint ventures to bid on the work. Any new joint venture would get credit for relevant work on nuclear waste management that its parent companies have done in the past or are doing now, DOE wrote in the request.
The management contractor for Yucca Mountain was USA Repository Services, which included AREVA Federal Services, now Orano Federal Services, AECOM, now Amentum, and CB&I, now part of the bankrupt McDermott.
The agency in May began early conceptual work on a federal interim storage facility capable of storing 15 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from civilian power plants, or about 16% of all the spent fuel now stored near the power plants that generated it.
Under existing law, DOE may select a site for an interim storage facility but may not build it until first opening a permanent repository.
