The Energy Department declined several requests from prospective vendors to extend the Feb. 3 deadline for bidding on a potential 10-year, $3 billion Nationwide Deactivation, Decommissioning, and Removal Contract for excess facilities.
The Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center last month published 152 questions and answers from potential bidders on the final request for proposals (RFP) posted Dec. 17. Many, citing the winter holidays, requested the submission deadline be pushed back from Feb. 3 to late February or early March.
The first contaminated facility to be torn down under the procurement will be Building 251 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The structure was used from the 1950s until 1981 to produce heavy-element nuclear tracers to support underground testing of nuclear devices.
Removal of Building 251 will be Task Order 1 under the procurement; the Energy Department expects the job to be completed within two years of signing a contract.
The procurement could lead to issuance of an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract to multiple vendors, which would then be eligible to compete for future deactivation and removal projects at other federal nuclear sites. The Energy Department has indicated it could issue the DD&R contract about nine months after proposals are submitted, which would be November.
The agency declined to say in the published Q&A how many awards might be issued from the RFP. However, it noted in its official reply that plenty of contaminated, no-longer-needed facilities remain be demolished throughout the nuclear complex. The agency pointed to an October 2018 report to Congress in which then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry said there are roughly 1,600 such facilities controlled by DOE’s Offices of Environmental Management, Nuclear Energy, and Science, along with its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
Addressing all the facilities is likely to cost more than $12 billion, according to that report.
